The United States has expanded the role of American diplomats in collecting intelligence overseas and at the United Nations, ordering State Department personnel to gather the credit card and frequent-flier numbers, work schedules and other personal information of foreign dignitaries.<\/p>\n
Revealed in classified State Department cables, the directives, going back to 2008, appear to blur the traditional boundaries between statesmen and spies.<\/p>\n
The cables give a laundry list of instructions for how State Department employees can fulfill the demands of a \u201cNational Humint Collection Directive\u201d\u009d in specific countries. (\u201cHumint\u201d\u009d is spy-world jargon for human intelligence collection.) One cable asks officers overseas to gather information about \u201coffice and organizational titles; names, position titles and other information on business cards; numbers of telephones, cellphones, pagers and faxes,\u201d\u009d as well as \u201cinternet and intranet \u201d\u02dchandles\u2019, internet e-mail addresses, web site identification-URLs; credit card account numbers; frequent-flier account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n