The National Security Agency of the United States of America is in the news again according to information from German news outfit Der Spiegel, that it successfully bugged United Nations Conferneces.

In the Summer of 2012, NSA experts succeeded in getting into the U.N. video conferencing system and cracking its coding system. "The data traffic gives us internal video teleconferences of the United Nations (yay!)," Der Spiegel quoted one document as saying, adding that within three weeks the number of decoded communications rose to 458 from 12.
In three ways, the NSA attacked by its own account, the European branches: each bug as well as by copying the hard drives in New York and infiltrating the computer network in Washington. Here, the NSA took advantage that the computer of the EU embassies about a so-called Virtual Private Network (VPN) are interconnected. "If we lose access to a page where we can get him back immediately when we come through the VPN to the other side" for components in NSA technicians in an internal presentation. "We have used several times when we were at, Magothy 'kicked out."

As disconcerting as the revelation may be, this is hardly the first time the United Nations has been the stage for a bit of international espionage. British Parliament member Clare Short blew the whistle in 2004 on a UK intelligence effort that saw British agents spying on then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and The Observer published a leaked memo from a senior NSA official just prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 asking staffers to increase surveillance on security counsel members and other UN officials.

http://ember365.com/e365/index.php/more/news/item/nsa-bugged-united-nations