US looking to blackmail?

Martin Bright, one of the authors of the Observer article that broke the story of US spying on members of the UN Security Council, was interviewed last week on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation show Lateline.

In an exchange with host Tony Jones, Bright highlighted a part of the story which has not been heavily scrutinized in media reports. He said:

It's quite clear what they [the NSA] were going for was not only the voting patterns and the voting plans and the negotiations with other interested parties such as the French or the Chinese, it wasn't just the bare bones, it was also the office telephone communications and email communications and also what are described as 'domestic coms', which is the home telephones of people working within the UN.

This can only mean that they were looking for personal information.

That is, information which could be used against those delagates [sic].

It's even clear from the memo that this was an aggressive operation.

Maybe I'm catching on late here, but, if true, this allegation makes the spy story much more significant.

Blight is suggesting that the NSA was not merely looking for information to give the US an inside track on the deliberations within member states of the Security Council. It was also searching for personal information which could be used, specifically, as blackmail.

If it wasn't before, this story should now be regarded as a major scandal.

(via media revolution)