{"id":5826,"date":"2013-06-21T07:37:58","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T07:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=5826"},"modified":"2013-06-21T07:37:58","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T07:37:58","slug":"sa-knew-uk-was-spying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=5826","title":{"rendered":"SA knew UK was spying"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"spy\"<\/a>The South African government knew that British spooks were spying on it at the 2009 London G20 summit, say international relations sources.<\/p>\n

As soon as it became aware of the surveillance by the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters, it took measures to strengthen security for its delegations visiting \u00adforeign countries.<\/p>\n

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The UK government acknowledged this week to its South African counterpart that the action was wrong, international relations insiders told the Mail & Guardian<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Though the news of the UK spying on South Africa was made public by the Guardian<\/em> newspaper only last weekend, a source in the department of international relations and co-operation (Dirco) told the M&G<\/em> that South Africa knew about the spooks in 2009, but opted to deal with the matter privately because of its embarrassing nature.<\/p>\n

“What was carried in that Guardian<\/em> article is something we already knew,” said the international relations source.<\/p>\n

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Among other things, the increased security measures demand that no South African government minister is allowed to use any host country’s communication tools when visiting other countries.<\/p>\n

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Dirco this week demanded that the UK government take action against those involved in the espionage at two G20 meetings in April and September 2009. South Africa, however, said this incident would not hurt “solid, strong and cordial” ties with the UK.<\/p>\n

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Dirco spokesperson Clayson Monyela told the M&G<\/em> that South Africa would use relevant diplomatic channels to communicate issues. “There’s a planned SA\/UK bilateral [meeting] in the coming weeks and South Africa will utilise that opportunity to raise anything that we believe affects our relationship.”<\/p>\n

Information about the UK’s spying on South Africa, Turkey and Russia came to the fore this week after former US spy Edward Snowden leaked documents to the Guardian<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Dirco insider said while governments know that they spy on each other, the UK is in the wrong because “they deliberately set up countries that they spied on. That’s not a conventional way of doing things. That’s why all the countries affected reacted with anger. As much as we know we spy on each other, don’t get caught.”\u00a0 – M&G<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The South African government knew that British spooks were spying on it at the 2009 London G20 summit, say international relations sources. As soon as it became aware of the surveillance by the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters, it took measures to strengthen security for its delegations visiting \u00adforeign countries. The UK government acknowledged this … Continue reading “SA knew UK was spying”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,123],"tags":[2956,3366,3367],"class_list":["post-5826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","category-world","tag-spying","tag-uk-spooks","tag-united-kingdoms-government-communications-headquarters"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/spy.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5826"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5831,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5826\/revisions\/5831"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}