The Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States government are the best-known intelligence agencies worldwide. In Hollywood films, we always see thrilling spying and undercover operations carried out by these agencies. These movie plots could reflect the situation in the real world.

It is understandable for countries to gather intelligence for safeguarding their national security; the surveillance and monitoring activities of intelligence agencies are usually exempt from the constraints of their local laws, and sometimes surveillance operations can help uncover and crush plots of terrorist attacks, thereby protecting innocent civilians.

But it was surprising to learn that US intelligence agencies had been spying on leaders of Washington’s allies, who had no privacy at all under the glare of spying equipment operated by those agencies.

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed extensive surveillance programs targeting foreign governments and their officials; this included the revelation that the NSA had spied on Germany’s then-chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone calls. All of her sensitive phone calls had been monitored by the US government — and the US has also monitored the communications of other European leaders. These actions started in 2002 and continued for more than a decade.

In 2010, Keith Alexander, who was director of the NSA at the time, reported the agency’s surveillance activities on global leaders to then-US president Barack Obama, and was told to continue spying on Merkel, even though Obama was fully aware that such actions infringed on US allies’ national security. In 2013, the NSA’s German counterpart, the Federal Intelligence Service, finally discovered these spying activities; and Angela Merkel called Obama to protest, saying that such behavior was “unacceptable”. The US Department of State promised to remove Merkel from the list of targets they spy on.

It was reported that many other European leaders, notably those of countries which are NATO members, had been spied on for years, and these spying activities had been extended to include ordinary citizens in Europe.

According to the Danish government, the US had been intercepting data packets transferred through submarine cables in that country’s waters to spy on communications between Sweden, Norway, France and Germany. This included communications between their heads of state. By referring to Der Spiegel’s research, we know that the US intercepted and spied on 2 million communications in France a day and half a billion communications in Germany in a typical month.

While in Asia, the US launched cyber-attacks on Chinese government offices, and on China’s aviation, space exploration, oil and internet industries, from 2008 to 2019. The Washington Post once revealed that the NSA had successfully hacked into equipment owned by Huawei and set up a secret network-attack plan called Shotgiant. Two cybersecurity firms in China also discovered that US spy agencies had hacked into Chinese citizens’ internet accounts, gaining access to office files, private data, e-mails, real-time data captured by webcams, and even message records on QQ, a popular instant messaging service software in China.

These foreign agencies have severely infringed on Chinese citizens’ privacy; the examples mentioned above are just the tip of the iceberg of US spying activities.

Ironically, while spying on leaders of other countries without restraint, hacking global business entities on an industrial scale, and surveilling global internet users with the most sophisticated technologies and tools available in the world, Washington is presenting itself as a cybersecurity defender. Such disgusting hypocrisy has been laid bare by various parties and rejected by many countries, including its allies.

Ivan Chu is a member of United Nations ESCAP Sustainable Business Network (UN ESBN), and a member of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies.

Eugene Chan is a program leader and senior lecturer of Higher Education Institution.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.