UK agency 'spied on foreign politicians' Leaked documents reveal British agencies spied on foreign delegates during two G20 summits in 2009. BRITAIN'S electronic eavesdropping agency mounted an intensive spying operation on foreign politicians attending two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009, it has been reported. The Guardian said on Sunday leaked documents show that delegates had their computers monitored and phones intercepted on the orders of the British Government. The intelligence agencies were even said to have set up internet cafes specifically to enable them to read the emails of those taking part in the summit. Traditionally friendly powers such as South Africa and Turkey were among the countries targeted during the course of the operation. The paper said that the documents suggested the operation was sanctioned at a senior level in the government of then prime minister Gordon Brown and that the intelligence obtained was passed to ministers. The disclosure is potentially embarrassing for Prime Minister David Cameron as he prepares to welcome leaders to the G8 summit at Lough Erne in Northern Ireland. The Guardian said the details were contained in documents obtained by Edward Snowden, the US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower responsible for a string of disclosures about US intelligence operations. During the course of the two summits in April and September 2009, the British agency GCHQ deployed what one document said were "ground-breaking intelligence capabilities" to monitor the communications of the visiting delegation. They were said to have enabled a team of 45 analysts to be provided with live round-the-clock summaries of who was phoning whom during the proceeding. The methods used included penetrating security of delegates' BlackBerrys in order to monitor their emails and phone calls. Internet cafes were set up by GCHQ and MI6 able to "extract key logging info" for delegates, provide the agencies with "sustained intelligence options against them" even after the summits were over. The Turkish finance minister - and possibly 15 other members of his party - were among those targeted, according to the documents. There was what The Guardian described as a sustained campaign over the computers of the South Africans - which had access to their foreign ministry network. British intelligence also received reports relating to an NSA attempt to listen in on the phone calls of the Russian leader Dmitri Medvedev as they passed through the satellite links to Moscow. There was no immediate response from the government to the report. GCHQ previously said in relation to an earlier report about its involvement in NSA operations, that its work was carried out "in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate."