WarSclerotic

American whistle-blower Edward Snowden claimed in an interview with the German daily Der Spiegel that Israel and the U.S. co-wrote the Stuxnet computer virus that was allegedly deployed to infect Iran’s computer network and damage its nuclear program.

Snowden claimed that the National Security Agency frequently partnered with many nations in addition Israel.

“The NSA has a massive body responsible for this: FAD, the Foreign Affairs Directorate,” he said.

The information Snowden provided was passed on to Der Spiegel by Jacob Appelbaum, 30, a developer of encryption and security software who provides training to international human rights groups and journalists on how to use the Internet anonymously.

The paper employed Appelbaum’s services even before Snowden became a household name to help determine the veracity of his identity as an NSA operative.

Snowden also shed light on the U.K.’s General Communications Headquarters and its Tempora system during the interview.

According to Snowden, “Tempora is the signals intelligence community’s first ‘full-take’ Internet buffer that doesn’t care about content type and pays only marginal attention to the Human Rights Act. It snarfs [grabs a large document or file and uses it without the author’s permission] everything, in a rolling buffer to allow retroactive investigation without missing a single bit.

“If your sick daughter’s medical records get processed at a London call center … well, you get the idea,” Snowden said.

Snowden also told Der Spiegel, through Appelbaum, that the NSA and its partner intelligence services, “the so-called Five Eye Partners” (a reference to the intelligence services of United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) cooperate on every possible bit of data collection for telephone calls, text and data.

Cuban leader Raul Castro expressed his support for Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia on Monday for offering Snowden political asylum. As of Tuesday morning (Israel time), Snowden was still located in Moscow’s international airport.