A sign stands outside the National Security Administration (NSA) campus in Fort Meade, Md., Thursday, June 6, 2013.[/caption]The recent leaks about US spying programs by American whistleblower Edward Snowden shows that the US intelligence community has �a backdoor left open� through which Israel can steal intelligence collected by US spy agencies, says Jim W Dean, managing editor and columnist at Veterans Today.
In a phone interview with Press TV on Monday, Dean said if Snowden was able to take top-secret information about the mechanisms of the US National Security Agency, there is no reason to believe �that Israeli intelligence was not able to do the same thing.�
Through �a back door left open� in the US intelligence community �the Israelis could come in, steal this information and do all the things that under the law we�re not allowed to do,� he added.
US law authorizes the NSA to collect intelligence without warrant on communications of foreign targets who are non-US citizens and outside the US at the time of data collection.
Through a process termed �incidental collection,� domestic communications on US soil can also be recorded into the NSA�s databases.
Documents leaked by Snowden in June showed that the US spy agency is spying on US citizens� phone call data and tracking the use of US-based web servers by all people across the globe.
�Because the Israelis took it and they have it, the US government people can say we are not mining this information, we�re not looking at it,� said Dean.
By Press TV
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