British intelligence agencies have access to hotel reservation systems worldwide

UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has access to the systems of room reservation in hotels popular among diplomats around the world. Thus, the intelligence services track the movements of civil servants and official delegations, German weekly Der Spiegel reported on Sunday with reference to documents declassified by Edward Snowden. The publication notes that the program has the code name of "Royal Concierge" and has the highest level of secrecy. If intelligence officers learned that a delegation would stop at a specific hotel, preparations were made there: the phones in the rooms were either bugged, or spies were sent into neighboring rooms, according to Der Spiegel. The system was tracking 350 hotels in total. In continuation of the spy scandal, the publication writes that US Secretary of State John Kerry plans a "conciliatory trip" to Germany. The head of US diplomacy, according to the magazine, will travel to Berlin as soon as Germany will have a new government.