NSA collected data on 122 world leaders in one month: Spiegel
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Berlin - The US surveillance agency NSA collected data on 122 international leaders in a single month, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday, quoting from a document in the trove taken by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The names of the top-level targets in May 2009 were apparently arranged alphabetically by first name, from Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, to Yulia Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian prime minister at the time.
Spiegel said the document showed more than 300 items collected on Merkel. Last year it was alleged and not disputed by Washington that that NSA, or National Security Agency, monitored Merkel's mobilephone.
The magazine said only 12 names were on the document it saw. Others included Abdullah Badawi, who had just resigned as Malaysian prime minister.
DPA
