The Raw Story – AFP, July 31, 2013
 |
| Demonstrators take part in a protest against the US National Security Agency (NSA) collecting German emails, online chats and phone calls and sharing some of it with the country's intelligence services in Berlin on July 27, 2013. (AFP) |
A secret
surveillance system known as XKeyscore allows US intelligence to monitor
“nearly everything a typical user does on the Internet,” according to leaked
documents published on Wednesday.
Citing
classified documents provided by fugitive intelligence contractor Edward
Snowden, British daily the Guardian said the program was the most wide-reaching
operated by the National Security Agency.
The paper
said the existence of XKeyscore proves the truth of Snowden’s earlier claim,
denied by some US officials, that before he left the NSA he could “wiretap
anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president,
if I had a personal email.”
On its
website, The Guardian published a batch of slides from what appears to be an
internal US intelligence training briefing laying out the capabilities of the
XKeyscore program.
The paper
had blacked out four of the 32 slides because “they reveal details of specific
NSA operations,” but the rest lay out the operation of the program in detail.
The slides
are marked “Top Secret” and restricted to authorized personnel from the United
States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They were produced in 2007
and not due to be declassified until 2032.
According
to the slide, XKeyscore allows US spies to monitor in real time the emails, web
browsing, Internet searches, social media use and virtually all online activity
of a target.
The
system’s computer infrastructure is based on a “massive distributed Linux
cluster” and has 500 servers distributed around the world.
A map
included in the briefing suggests that these servers are located all over world
on every continent, on the territory of US allies and of rivals like Russia,
China and Venezuela.
Where XKeyscore appears to differ from other US surveillance programs that have already been revealed is that it can index and make searchable virtually any online activity.
Where XKeyscore appears to differ from other US surveillance programs that have already been revealed is that it can index and make searchable virtually any online activity.
“No other
system performs this on raw unselected bulk traffic,” the document boasts.
XKeyscore
does not require an intelligence analyst to have a “strong selector” such as an
email address to find his target — agents can work back from a general search
to find an individual.
The
examples it gives are if someone is using an unusual language for his area,
such as German in Pakistan, or using Google Maps to scout targets for attack,
the program can isolate that data and track it back.
The
document boasts that XKeyscore has allowed US agents to capture “over 300
terrorists” but pages that apparently relate to specific operations have been
redacted by The Guardian.
The slides
also say that XKeyscore is being updated to make it more powerful and faster
and to broaden the range of data it can search, for example to add a way to
monitor the EXIF data embedded in digital photographs.
The
Guardian interviewed Snowden in June, when the young contractor was in Hong
Kong, having fled his job at tha NSA in Hawaii carrying a trove of top secret
documents.
The paper
did not say why it had not published details of XKeyscore in June, when it
revealed the existence of a less capable US surveillance system known as Prism.
But the
leak coincided with a hearing of the US Senate judiciary committee at which top
intelligence officials are to be grilled by lawmakers concerned that their
agencies have exceeded the law.
It is
illegal in the United States for intelligence agencies to monitor US citizens
without a court order, but Snowden’s leaks have shown that Americans are
regularly caught up in monitoring sweeps.
The
revelations have also embarrassed Washington abroad, where some have been
shocked by the extent of US Internet surveillance.
Related Articles:
US fumes as Russia grants Snowden asylum
NSA pays £100m in secret funding for UK spy agency GCHQ
XKeyscore: NSA tool collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'
US fumes as Russia grants Snowden asylum
NSA pays £100m in secret funding for UK spy agency GCHQ
XKeyscore: NSA tool collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'
No comments:
Post a Comment