Wednesday, November 14, 2018

So, embassies are bugged?

One issue that is being rather queasily skirted around in the case of the alleged torture, killing and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul is exactly how an audio recording was made and disseminated to the Turkish authorities and the world's press. You would have thought that the provenance and reliability of the audio source would have been extremely important in a case like this, but little if anything has been released about it. Why is no-one talking about it?
Some Turkish newspapers got hold of the idea that the whole thing was recorded on Khashoggi's Apple Watch, but there are several compelling reasons why this story does not hold water. Which leaves us with the rather unpalatable conclusion that the Turkish authorities were (and probably still are) bugging the whole of the Saudi embassy, and who knows how many other embassies.
And they Turks are almost certainly not alone. There is evidence that many foreign embassies are routinely bugged, wherever the host nation can get away with it. Edward Snowdon's evidence a few years ago revealed that the USA regularly bugs all sorts of embassies. And you thought they were just processing your visa application in there!

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