Secret Documents: NSA Sounds Out EU Representation Using Bugs
Hamburg – The American National Security Agency (NSA) is not only surveiling the communication of European citizens, but rather specifically spying on Buildings of the EU. That is what comes out of secret documents that are in possession of whistleblower Edward Snowden and that the Spiegel partly could take a look at. A document by the NSA labeled as top-secret describes how the secret service is attacking the diplomatic representation of the EU in Washington.
According to that document not only bugs have been installed in the building, located in the center of the US-capital, but the internal computer network has been infiltrated as well. This way the Americans did not only gain access to meetings in rooms of the EU, but also access to e-mails and internal documents on the computers.
The attack on institutions of the EU shows another further layer of spying activities by the NSA. For weeks details about Prism and further surveillance programs have been coming to light that have been collected by the whistleblower Snowden. The British secret service GCHQ, too, is running accordingly a similar program called Tempora, which is used to surveil world-wide telephone and internet connections.
According to the documents the Spiegel could take a look at the EU representation at the United Nations has been attacked the same way as the one in Washington. The NSA document from September 2010 e explicitly mentions the Europeans as target.

**Eavesdropping Operation on Telephone System in Brussels**
Apparently the NSA is responsible for an eavesdropping operation that happened in Brussels. A little more than five year ago several failed calls being directed at the remote servicing installation in the Justus-Lipsius-Building caught the eyes of EU security experts. The European Council and the Council of the European Union reside in that building.
The tracks, traced by the security services, lead to the NATO headquarter located in Brussels suburb Evere. An exact analysis show that the attack on the telephone system were apparently coming from a separately shielded area that is being used by the NSA .
A check of the remote servicing installations showed that it had been successfully called from that exact same NATO complex. Every member of the EU has rooms with telephone and internet access for their ministers to seclude oneself to.