Recent documents revealed by Edward Snowden show that the US NSA and the UK Secret Service (GCHQ) have violated the UAV (drones) Israeli airborne feeds.
Like most military aircraft these days, drones are equipped with videocameras. These cameras are used for recording material but also for remote control of the aircraft.
The data collected by the aircraft cameras are coded and sent to satellites. They are then transferred to military bases or other special ground stations.
According to Snowden's leaked documents, the United States and the United Kingdom had set up such a ground station on the site of Troodos in Cyprus, 1998, especially for collecting videos from Israeli drones.
The secrets services of the US and UK started by using a wide net to eavesdrop on the video feeds, but eventually narrowed the scope when they discovered the individual frequency of each drone. The technique is similar to what someone uses to listen to police radio frequencies.
In 1997, however, Israel discovered that Hezbollah had killed 12 of its commandos after stealing feeds without encryption from a drone. Since then, Israel has reportedly encrypted all drone video feeds.
This did not prevent US and UK agents, who 2008 discovered that by intercepting periodic snapshots of encrypted video feeds, they could use a C library called AntiSky to decode the aircraft's camera record.
Edward Snowden's revelations and the NSA documents that they leaked exist in TheIntercept.
