Israeli Drones Over Gaza Hacked By US, UK Intelligence

The US and UK intelligence secretly tapped into electronic feeds – including video – from Israel’s military drones and jet fighters to monitor military operations in Gaza.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has released a material which revealed that UK and US intelligence officials have been regularly accessing Israeli cockpit cameras even in the midst of operations in Gaza and Lebanon.

According to the leaked documents, Israeli drone communications were first intercepted in 1998.

Codenamed Anarchist, the programme was revealed by the Intercept, a US website edited by Glenn Greenwald.

The UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) working with the National Security Agency has recorded a series of “Anarchist snapshots” — thumbnail images from videos taped by drone cameras, the report reveals. The files also show location data mapping the flight paths of the aircraft.

The Intercept report has released several of the snapshots, a subset collected in 2009 and 2010, that appear to show drones carrying missiles.

Additionally, in 2012, a GCHQ analyst reported “regular collects of Heron TP carrying weapons,” referring to a giant drone made by the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, known as IAI.

According to a report in an internal newsletter for the NSA, analysts had “collected video for the first time from the cockpit of an Israeli Air Force F-16 fighter jet, [which] showed a target on the ground being tracked”.