Korea and Singapore Alleged to Have Assisted NSA in Eavesdropping

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on November 25 that Korea and Singapore have acted as key eavesdropping partners of the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States in its so-called Five Eyes program. 

The daily newspaper quoted former CIA employee Edward Snowden as saying that Singapore and Korea helped the NSA tap the phone calls to and from the intelligence agencies of Indonesia and China, respectively. “The US and Australia have tapped international phone calls and Internet access by using submarine communications networks in the pan-Pacific region, and Korea and Singapore have helped them to do so,” a document he exposed read. It went on to read, “In particular, Singapore, which has been the communications hub of Southeast Asia since the 1970s, has been in close cooperation with the Australian intelligence agency for an extended period of time as the wiretapping center of Southeast Asia.”

Korea has submarine communications networks starting from Busan City and extending all the way to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. It has been found that the networks have been used by the US for the same purpose. The exposed document also claimed that the US made use of its wiretapping facilities located in its west coast region, Hawaii and Guam, to monitor all of the telecommunications in the pan-Pacific area.