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Mossad, MI6 also spying on Americans: US intelligence expert

Former US intelligence linguist Scott Rickard says international spy agencies, such as Israel’s Mossad and Britain’s MI6, are also spying on Americans.

A former US intelligence linguist says international spy agencies, such as Israel’s Mossad and Britain’s MI6, are also spying on Americans, collecting data on them in the United States.

“One of the things that is very clear here is that not only is our US intelligence resources gathering intelligence against Americans, but also foreign intelligence resources such as Mossad and MI6 and other international intelligence agencies are also collecting intelligence against the Americans within the United States,” Scott Rickard said told Press TV on Thursday.

He made the remarks after a US appeals court ruled that America’s National Security Agency (NSA) controversial mass collection of Americans’ phone records is illegal.

The court’s decision was in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) arguing the data collection program violates privacy rights of Americans.

“Today the appeals court in the United States actually finally made a good judgment on the fact that it is illegal to collect intelligence and phone records against American citizens, but unfortunately the verdict did not include the cessation of the collection and it also been actually covered the fact that the intelligence collection is going beyond just the phone records,” Rickard said.

“It does approach the actual phone records issue, but it really doesn’t approach the underlying root problem here in the sense that the intelligence agencies have an extremely broad capabilities of collecting intelligence against not only Americans but the people in governments and [are also engaged] industrial espionage worldwide,” he said.

“So you have a huge, huge issue around intelligence that is not being addressed in this very simple case that the ACLU has brought.”

In June 2013, Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, began leaking classified intelligence documents showing the extent of the NSA’s spying activities.

According to the documents, the agency has been collecting phone records of millions of Americans as well as foreign nationals and political leaders around the world.

US civil liberties advocates argue that the collected phone records could give intelligence agencies a road map to Americans' private activities.

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