> However the Belgian government and security services were kept in the dark, something which the federal prosecutor’s report described as “exceptional between EU states, and something that could lead to a diplomatic incident.”
If this operation was ONLY meant to target a subsidiary working mostly inside the middle-east with legitimate terrorist ties, I'd imagine they would have included the Belgians.
One could speculate that GCHQ decided to go it alone, just to see "what else we can get" in terms of potentially spying within Belgian/on Belgian's citizens.
It isn't even the first time GCHQ has been caught spying on other European countries[0]. But I guess the City of London needs to get their financial "tips" somehow...
> However the Belgian government and security services were kept in the dark, something which the federal prosecutor’s report described as “exceptional between EU states, and something that could lead to a diplomatic incident.”
If this operation was ONLY meant to target a subsidiary working mostly inside the middle-east with legitimate terrorist ties, I'd imagine they would have included the Belgians.
One could speculate that GCHQ decided to go it alone, just to see "what else we can get" in terms of potentially spying within Belgian/on Belgian's citizens.
It isn't even the first time GCHQ has been caught spying on other European countries[0]. But I guess the City of London needs to get their financial "tips" somehow...
[0] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/gchq-and-nsa-tar...