Only a well-resourced party like the NSA could deploy such a grandiose surveillance program. XKEYSCORE, which the NSA calls its “widest reaching” surveillance program, was established around 2008 and consists of more than 700 servers that store data sucked from the internet’s backbone and mine this data for patterns and connections. They still claim Snowden is blowing this out of proportion, but that argument only holds water if you believe a government organization with direct access to a non-adversarial court that rubber stamps 99% of its warrant requests should be running the show.ĭon't forget - this is the same organization that can't run an internal email search due to antiquated technology.Of all the NSA surveillance documents Edward Snowden leaked, some of the most important exposed the spy agency’s so-called XKEYSCORE program, a massive system for vacuuming up and sifting through emails, chats, images, online search activity, usernames and passwords, and other private digital data from core fiber optics cables around the world. This is a reassurance that isn't actually reassuring anyone of anything.įinally, note that the organization has dropped the pretense of being unable to gather massive amounts of critical data on people. The question of whether or not the NSA is doing something illegal hasn't really come up. What's being argued is whether or not these programs are constitutional, necessary, or if this is what Congress and the American people intended when they authorized the Patriot Act. Next, "lawfulness." Yes, what the NSA is doing is lawful. The current rules prohibit the disclosure of information that would allow anyone to actually challenge legitimacy. The NSA only deploys these tools against legitimate targets as determined by the NSA. I've added emphasis because it's important to point out the dodge.
XKEYSCORE SEARCH DATA MANUAL
Access to XKeyscore, as well as all of NSA's analytic tools, is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks … In addition, there are multiple technical, manual and supervisory checks and balances within the system to prevent deliberate misuse from occurring." Allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are simply not true. “XKeyscore is used as a part of NSA's lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system. The NSA's response to these leaks has been as follows: "NSA's activities are focused and specifically deployed against – and only against – legitimate foreign intelligence targets in response to requirements that our leaders need for information necessary to protect our nation and its interests,” the statement said. Based on Snowden's previous claims, however, it doesn't sound that way. Of course, it's possible that the NSA was engaging in a bit of self-promoting dialog, promising internal capabilities that weren't as straightforward as they might sound. Another describes how Google Maps can be used to determine web searches and find targets doing "suspicious stuff." "Show me all the VPN customers." There's another slide, later, that boasts about how the system can be used to detect a German traveling in Pakistan by detecting his use of the German language and tracking German servers.
According to the documents, XKeyscore can be configured to watch for email traffic, Facebook chats, or set to log all visitors to a given domain.Ĭlaims like this demolish any idea that the NSA is dedicated to protecting anyone's data. The newly revealed program, XKeyscore, is designed to analyze and search data in ways that would make Google jealous. The authority question may be up for discussion, but new leaks from The Guardian today have blown gaping craters (again) into the NSA's allegations that the sort of spying Snowden alleges was beyond its capabilities. The NSA has strongly denied these claims, arguing that it had neither the technological capability to engage in such monitoring nor the authority to do so. Snowden has stated that as a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, "I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email." One of the contentious issues that's swirled around the NSA since whistleblower Edward Snowden began leaking information on the organization's capabilities is exactly what it can - or can't - do.
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