Can someone explain the rationale for leaking this? I have been a strong critic of NSA domestic surveillance, but what is described in the article seems to be the appropriate use of the U.S. intelligence apparatus.
Israeli sources claim that the reason that this information is published at this timing is a German-Israeli drone deal in which the US Predator lost - http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/international/europ...
They also claim that since 2011 (The last "hacking" incident) there was a major change in the way that drone communication is encrypted.
Edit: changed 2010 to 2011
The only event I found from 2012 is labeled as 'regular collects of Heron TP carrying weapons' I'm not sure what it means.
The public interest ceased to be an issue as soon as the documents were handed off to the media.
Not lobbying for the release of your own spies would be very much out of the ordinary.
“We know that the Americans spy on the whole world, and also on us, also on their friends. But still, it is disappointing, inter alia because, going back decades already, we have not spied nor collected intelligence nor hacked encryptions in the United States.”
I suspect it is fully-in-cheek.
I disagree. The important revelations from Snowden (in my opinion) is not nation-states spying on (officals of) other nation-states, it's nation-states conducting dragnet surveillance on their own citizens and citizens of other countries.
(My personal view is that the US should definitely spy on every government in the world, and they're welcome to try to spy on us if they want, because it's dumb to pretend that it's not going to happen and then pitch a fit when what everyone knew was happening is revealed to be happening. But under that policy it's not better or worse to target Germany as opposed to Israel.)