A Canadian civil liberties group, OpenMedia.ca, quickly objected. "It's ... clear this spying was aimed at supporting US policy goals during a highly contentious summit," executive director Steve Anderson said in a statement. "This is sure to cause huge damage to Canada's relationships with our other G-20 partners."
Snowden, earlier this year, began leaking top-secret documents detailing the NSA's collection of millions of US communications records, among other practices.
Reports in other media have said the NSA allegedly monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone, swept up millions of French telephone records and hacked the computer network of Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras.
In response to the reports, the UN general assembly's human rights committee is expected to vote in the next week on a resolution to protect the right to privacy against unlawful surveillance in the digital age.
