Do you remember? that terribly insulting feeling when it turned out that the United States, the friend of the Europeans and the guarantor of security, seems to be spying on the industry operating in the EU countries and even on ordinary citizens?

It was suspected that the US spies every day on the phone records, faxes and even the popular e-mails of millions of Europeans. It was alleged that information was also stolen for the benefit of American companies.

It has been almost 23 years since the European Parliament established a temporary special committee in the summer of 2000 to find out how far the joint global spy system Echelon of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand extends its tentacles and what could be done about it.

The Americans denied the existence of the entire Echelon and considered the EU Parliament’s report a mockery. When the Euro representatives flew to Washington on a fact-finding trip in the spring of 2001, the representatives of the five American agencies announced by fax that the agreed meetings could not be arranged, almost at the same time and using the same wording. The EU Parliament was allowed to publish its report without consulting the Americans.

Transatlantic friendship was tested again in 2013, for example. Edward Snowden revealed that the United States is spying on, among other things, the cell phone of the German Chancellor, European Union offices, companies of friendly countries and much more.

According to Snowden, the US intelligence agencies had access to user data of the following companies and services: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, Youtube, Skype, AOL and Apple, through their program known exclusively as PRISM.

The espionage revealed by Snowden was partly intertwined with the Five Eyes cooperation of five English-speaking countries, which is considered to have started in the fall of 1941, i.e. about a year before the US President Joe Bidenin birth. The same five set up their Echelon network at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s.

This one on Thursday of this week, someone might have felt horrified and even hurt when the BBC channel reported that the United States had spied on the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterresia. And many others might have thought that there was nothing new from the western espionage front.

The spying on the UN boss is part of a series of revelations that began just before Easter, in which at least hundreds of pages of information gathered by US intelligence agencies have been leaked from social media chambers to traditional media. The documentaries have caused a stir both in the United States and globally.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that a 21-year-old American man would be behind the new leaks Jack Teixeira, who has worked as a soldier at an air base in Massachusetts and gained access to classified documents. He would have distributed papers on the Discord channel of the social media, from where they have spread from the hands of different users to the front pages of newspapers.

The man was arrested by the FBI on Thursday.

It is still unclear how much damaging information the leaks contain and how much more will possibly be seen, as information has appeared in the media bit by bit. At least part of the American media seems to have spared some details when describing the content of the documents. HS has seen dozens of documents that have been used in this story as well.

Roughly speaking, it seems that the leaks are a rather mixed collection of material gathered by US intelligence in various parts of the world through signals intelligence: this and that about the military threat posed by China, a small revelation about the Hungarian government’s aggressive attitude towards the United States, and potentially disturbing information about the ability of pro-Russian hackers to compromise Canada’s gas supply.

Influence, that the most detailed and potentially dangerous information in the leaks relates to the war in Ukraine. Some of the information is quite recent and very specific, raising concerns about, for example, Ukraine’s ability to launch an expected counterattack against Russian armed forces.

According to the leaks, Ukraine has a major shortage of anti-aircraft missiles. Some of the missile types have already been fired and some are using the last stock bases. In Western countries, this information can be treated with suspicion, indifference, or quickly sent supplements.

It is possible that the most detailed information about the leaks will be useful to Russia and force Ukraine to change its plans and schedules. But it is also possible that the Russians already know the things presented in the leaks with a fairly high degree of accuracy. Even though the Russian intelligence service in Ukraine has gained a reputation for fraud, it also has a proven ability to cause serious damage.

Many of the leaks are delicious material for the media, but at least somewhat outdated or purely speculative. For example, US intelligence estimates in one document that Ukraine’s bolder attacks on Russian soil could activate China to see the NATO military alliance as an aggressor and help Russia with more tangible armed aid.

According to another leaked document, China has already promised Russia armed assistance, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. Such information would have been grabbed from the communications of the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service.

An assault tank of the Ukrainian army near the Bahmut front on April 6. Picture: OLEKSANDR KLYMENKO / Reuters

of the United States from the point of view of the allies, the leaks are a reminder of how difficult a partnering superpower is: it spies on its friends and sometimes treats the intelligence material collected together in an algal manner. About 1.3 million people reportedly have access to documents classified as “top secret” in the United States.

The recent leak can be expected to lead to censorship in joint dealings with Americans and blackout of information on the most sensitive issues. For example, the 2010 WikiLeaks scandal about what US diplomats did and said made foreign officials and politicians in many other countries careful about their words.

The leaks also underscore the difficult situation the United States is in with its complex and geographically wide-ranging alliances, during the war in Ukraine and otherwise.

For example, according to leaks, Egypt has been secretly selling 40,000 rockets to Russia. The claim is very embarrassing for the United States, which pumps military aid to Egypt worth well over a billion euros every year. Egypt was quick to deny that any rocket sales were taking place and that it was a “forgery”.

South Korea, on the other hand, has objected to the sale of artillery ammunition to the United States based on the leaks, because South Korean law prohibits the sale of weapons to countries at war and the Americans are believed to be exporting ammunition to Ukraine.

However, one leaked document tells about a creative solution: “The director of the National Security Agency Kim presented the possibility of selling 330,000 pieces of 155-millimeter ammunition to Poland, because getting ammunition to Ukraine is the real goal of the United States.”

On Tuesday of this week, it was reported that the defense ministers of the United States and South Korea had talked on the phone and unanimously stated that “a large part of the document about South Korea is fake”.

Where friend, there’s the problem.

This seems to be the case with Israel as well, because the country does not want to support Ukraine with military aid, despite the wishes of the United States. This is because Israel wants to “maintain balance” between Russia and the US due to its problems with Syria and Iran, the intelligence paper says.

A creative solution has been developed for this as well, which in the published document is called pressing. According to the US intelligence assessment, with appropriate pressure, Israel might bend to the “Turkey model”, where Israel would pretend “goodwill relations” towards Moscow and at the same time provide armed aid to Russia’s enemy, Ukraine.

If other countries are upset by the espionage practiced by the United States, the United States may be upset by the information that the espionage produces. According to one leaked document, the United Arab Emirates, which is one of the “key partners” in the Middle East, would be closer to its intelligence cooperation with Russia, and the country’s authorities would be ready to conspire with the Russian FSB service against the United States and Britain.

The reason for the Emirates’ action would be that the United States is moving its eyes away from the Middle East and the Emirates needs new partners. However, according to the Emirates Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the claims made in the leaks are “absolutely false”.

The documents leaked in Finland, which has just joined NATO, remind us of at least one old wisdom that has been put into the mouths of various thinkers. According to it, countries have neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests.

Sources: Leaked Documents, WHD, US State Department, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, BBC, Reuters, EU Parliament, EUObserver, Military.com, HS.