One of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's most shocking revelations was that the US National Security Agency conducts almost-unrestricted surveillance on the heads of state of allied countries; this sparked a major scandal in Germany.
The US National Security Agency (NSA) shared intelligence with its Israeli counterparts from SIGINT National Unit (ISNU), the newest discoveries from Edward Snowden's leaked archives reveal. Notably, US law prohibited the agency from doing so, due to the ISNU's use of targeted assassinations.
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The two agencies started working together around the time of the Lebanon War in 2006 using a loophole, with the NSA feeding the intelligence on alleged terrorists via the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, according to an article in SIDToday – an internal publication of the NSA. The info reportedly allowed Israeli Defence Forces to launch precise strikes on Hezbollah during the war, but they still wanted to get all the intelligence they could and be exempted from the US laws banning them from obtaining it.
In 2009 the two agencies signed a memorandum of understanding that basically gave ISNU the access to the intelligence it sought. Israelis could look though all of the NSA's raw surveillance data, including American citizens, with only one exception – US officials. Still, even on this matter the NSA relied on ISNU honour as it was reportedly…
