A leading German news magazine says the U.S. National Security Agency, NSA, has eavesdropped on the United Nations, penetrating the world body's internal video conference system to decode data. Der Spiegel, in a report Sunday, linked its latest U.S. spy claim to secret files released by fugitive former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. The report did not say when the magazine acquired the information, or whether it came directly from Snowden. It alleges the spying took place in mid-2012.

Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies, The Independent has learnt. The station is able to tap into and extract data from the underwater fibre-optic cables passing through the region. The information is then processed for intelligence and passed to GCHQ in Cheltenham and shared with the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States.

Brazil said Wednesday it is moving to secure its communications through its own satellite and digital networks to end its dependence on the United States, which is accused of electronically spying on the region. "Brazil is in favor of greater decentralization: Internet governance must be multilateral and multisectoral with a broader participation," Communications Minister Paulo Bernardo told a congressional panel.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s volcanic revelations of ubiquitous US surveillance are in their third month. The aftershocks felt around the world continue. As Russia granted Snowden temporary asylum, the White House fell into anger and dismay. Computer scientist Nadia Heninger argued that leaking information is now becoming the “civil disobedience of our age”. The late historian and activist Howard Zinn described the act of civil disobedience as “the deliberate, discriminate, violation of law for a vital social purpose”.

Allegations of mass, indiscriminate government surveillance have sparked a global spat about its proper limits. In defending their programs, the United States and Britain have exposed a troubling, two-tiered approach to the right to privacy in the digital age. Neither government seems willing to recognize the privacy interests of people outside its borders. One thing is clear: as our lives become more connected through the Internet, the right to privacy has never been under a greater global threat.

The number of requests for Twitter user data from governments around the world continued to grow in the first half of 2013, the microblogging service said in its semiannual transparency report, released Wednesday. Overall, Twitter said, it received 1,157 requests for data covering 1,697 users, and it turned over at least some data in 55 percent of the cases. The number of requests was up about 15 percent from the last six months of 2012, the company said.