Global surveillance disclosures (1970–2013)

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Global surveillance refers to the practice of globalized mass surveillance on entire populations across national borders. [1] Although its existence was first revealed in the 1970s and led legislators to attempt to curb domestic spying by the National Security Agency (NSA), it did not receive sustained public attention until the existence of ECHELON was revealed in the 1980s and confirmed in the 1990s. [2] In 2013 it gained substantial worldwide media attention due to the global surveillance disclosure by Edward Snowden. [3]

Contents

History

1970s

In 1972 NSA analyst Perry Fellwock (under the pseudonym "Winslow Peck") introduced the readers of Ramparts magazine to the NSA and the UKUSA Agreement. [4] In 1976, a separate article in Time Out magazine revealed the existence of the GCHQ. [5]

1980s–1990s

In 1982 James Bamford's book about the NSA, The Puzzle Palace , was first published. Bamford's second book, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency , was published two decades later.

In 1988 the ECHELON network was revealed by Margaret Newsham, a Lockheed employee. Newsham told a member of the U.S. Congress that telephone calls of Strom Thurmond, a Republican U.S. senator, were being collected by the NSA. Congressional investigators determined that "targeting of U.S. political figures would not occur by accident. But was designed into the system from the start." [6]

By the late 1990s ECHELON was reportedly capable of monitoring up to 90% of all internet traffic. [7] According to the BBC in May 2001, however, "The US Government still refused to admit that Echelon even exists." [7]

2000s

The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center led to major reforms of U.S. intelligence agencies, and paved the way for the establishment of the Director of National Intelligence position. North face south tower after plane strike 9-11.jpg
The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center led to major reforms of U.S. intelligence agencies, and paved the way for the establishment of the Director of National Intelligence position.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, William Binney, along with colleagues J. Kirke Wiebe and Edward Loomis and in cooperation with House staffer Diane Roark, asked the U.S. Defense Department to investigate the NSA for allegedly wasting "millions and millions of dollars" on Trailblazer, a system intended to analyze data carried on communications networks such as the Internet. Binney was also publicly critical of the NSA for spying on U.S. citizens after the September 11, 2001 attacks. [8] Binney claimed that the NSA had failed to uncover the 9/11 plot despite its massive interception of data. [9]

In 2001, after the September 11 attacks, MI5 started collecting bulk telephone communications data in the United Kingdom (i.e. what telephone numbers called each other and when) and authorized the Home Secretary under the Telecommunications Act 1984 instead of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which would have brought independent oversight and regulation. This was kept secret until announced by the then Home Secretary in 2015. [10] [11] [12]

On December 16, 2005, The New York Times published a report under the headline "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts," which was co-written by Eric Lichtblau and the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Risen. According to The Times, the article's date of publication was delayed for a year (past the next presidential election cycle) because of alleged national security concerns. [13] Russ Tice was later revealed as a major source.

On January 1, 2006, President Bush emphasized that "This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America. And I repeat, limited." President Bush Speaking At Brooke Army Medical Center.jpg
On January 1, 2006, President Bush emphasized that "This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America. And I repeat, limited."

In 2006, further details of the NSA's domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens was provided by USA Today . The newspaper released a report on May 11, 2006 detailing the NSA's "massive database" of phone records collected from "tens of millions" of U.S. citizens. According to USA Today, these phone records were provided by several telecom companies such as AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth. [15] AT&T technician Mark Klein was later revealed as major source, specifically of rooms at network control centers on the internet backbone intercepting and recording all traffic passing through. In 2008 the security analyst Babak Pasdar revealed the existence of the so-called "Quantico circuit" that he and his team had set up in 2003. The circuit provided the U.S. federal government with a backdoor into the network of an unnamed wireless provider, which was later independently identified as Verizon. [16]

In 2007, former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio alleged in court and provided supporting documentation that in February 2001 (nearly 7 months prior to the September 11 attacks) that the NSA proposed in a meeting to conduct blanket phone spying. He considered the spying to be illegal and refused to cooperate, and claims that the company was punished by being denied lucrative contracts. [17]

2010–2013

In 2011 details of the mass surveillance industry were released by WikiLeaks. According to Julian Assange, "We are in a world now where not only is it theoretically possible to record nearly all telecommunications traffic out of a country, all telephone calls, but where there is an international industry selling the devices now to do it." [18]

Disclosures since 2013

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ECHELON</span> Signals intelligence collection and analysis network

ECHELON, originally a secret government code name, is a surveillance program operated by the five signatory states to the UKUSA Security Agreement: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, also known as the Five Eyes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GCHQ</span> British signals intelligence agency

Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the United Kingdom. Primarily based at "The Doughnut" in the suburbs of Cheltenham, GCHQ is the responsibility of the country's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, but it is not a part of the Foreign Office and its Director ranks as a Permanent Secretary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Security Agency</span> U.S. signals intelligence organization

The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, specializing in a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). The NSA is also tasked with the protection of U.S. communications networks and information systems. The NSA relies on a variety of measures to accomplish its mission, the majority of which are clandestine. The NSA has roughly 32,000 employees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian Signals Directorate</span> Australian signals intelligence agency

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), formerly the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), is the federal statutory agency in the Australian Government responsible for foreign signals intelligence, support to military operations, cyber warfare, and information security. ASD is part of the Australian Intelligence Community. ASD's role within UKUSA Agreement is to monitor signals intelligence ("SIGINT") in South and East Asia. The ASD also houses the Australian Cyber Security Centre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RAF Menwith Hill</span> Royal Air Force base in Yorkshire, England

Royal Air Force Menwith Hill is a Royal Air Force station near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, which provides communications and intelligence support services to the United Kingdom and the United States. The site contains an extensive satellite ground station and is a communications intercept and missile warning site. It has been described as the largest electronic monitoring station in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UKUSA Agreement</span> Multilateral signals intelligence treaty signed in 1946

The United Kingdom – United States of America Agreement is a multilateral agreement for cooperation in signals intelligence between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The alliance of intelligence operations is also known as the Five Eyes. In classification markings this is abbreviated as FVEY, with the individual countries being abbreviated as AUS, CAN, NZL, GBR, and USA, respectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terrorist Surveillance Program</span> NSA program

The Terrorist Surveillance Program was an electronic surveillance program implemented by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. It was part of the President's Surveillance Program, which was in turn conducted under the overall umbrella of the War on Terrorism. The NSA, a signals intelligence agency, implemented the program to intercept al Qaeda communications overseas where at least one party is not a U.S. person. In 2005, The New York Times disclosed that technical glitches resulted in some of the intercepts including communications which were "purely domestic" in nature, igniting the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. Later works, such as James Bamford's The Shadow Factory, described how the nature of the domestic surveillance was much, much more widespread than initially disclosed. In a 2011 New Yorker article, former NSA employee Bill Binney said that his colleagues told him that the NSA had begun storing billing and phone records from "everyone in the country."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Five Eyes</span> Intelligence alliance

The Five Eyes (FVEY) is an Anglosphere intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries are parties to the multilateral UK-USA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence. Informally, Five Eyes can refer to the group of intelligence agencies of these countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MAINWAY</span> NSA database of US telephone calls

MAINWAY is a database maintained by the United States' National Security Agency (NSA) containing metadata for hundreds of billions of telephone calls made through the largest telephone carriers in the United States, including AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tempora</span> GCHQ-operated Internet and telephone surveillance system

Tempora is the codeword for a formerly-secret computer system that is used by the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). This system is used to buffer most Internet communications that are extracted from fibre-optic cables, so these can be processed and searched at a later time. It was tested from 2008 and became operational in late 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Perry Fellwock</span>

Perry Fellwock is a former National Security Agency (NSA) analyst and whistleblower who revealed the existence of the NSA and its worldwide covert surveillance network in an interview, using the pseudonym Winslow Peck, with Ramparts in 1971. At the time that Fellwock blew the whistle on ECHELON, the NSA was a nearly unknown organization and among the most secretive of the US intelligence agencies. Fellwock revealed that it had a significantly larger budget than the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Fellwock was motivated by Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers. Today, Fellwock has been acknowledged as the first NSA whistleblower.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mass surveillance in the United States</span>

The practice of mass surveillance in the United States dates back to wartime monitoring and censorship of international communications from, to, or which passed through the United States. After the First and Second World Wars, mass surveillance continued throughout the Cold War period, via programs such as the Black Chamber and Project SHAMROCK. The formation and growth of federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA institutionalized surveillance used to also silence political dissent, as evidenced by COINTELPRO projects which targeted various organizations and individuals. During the Civil Rights Movement era, many individuals put under surveillance orders were first labelled as integrationists, then deemed subversive, and sometimes suspected to be supportive of the communist model of the United States' rival at the time, the Soviet Union. Other targeted individuals and groups included Native American activists, African American and Chicano liberation movement activists, and anti-war protesters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2010s global surveillance disclosures</span> Disclosures of NSA and related global espionage

During the 2010s, international media reports revealed new operational details about the Anglophone cryptographic agencies' global surveillance of both foreign and domestic nationals. The reports mostly relate to top secret documents leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The documents consist of intelligence files relating to the U.S. and other Five Eyes countries. In June 2013, the first of Snowden's documents were published, with further selected documents released to various news outlets through the year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Origins of global surveillance</span>

The origins of global surveillance can be traced back to the late 1940s, when the UKUSA Agreement was jointly enacted by the United Kingdom and the United States, whose close cooperation eventually culminated in the creation of the global surveillance network, code-named "ECHELON", in 1971.

This is a category of disclosures related to global surveillance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Global surveillance</span> Mass surveillance across national borders

Global mass surveillance can be defined as the mass surveillance of entire populations across national borders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stateroom (surveillance program)</span>

STATEROOM is the code name of a highly secretive signals intelligence collection program involving the interception of international radio, telecommunications and Internet traffic. It is operated out of the diplomatic missions of the signatories to the UKUSA Agreement and the members of the ECHELON network including Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of global surveillance disclosures (2013–present)</span>

This timeline of global surveillance disclosures from 2013 to the present day is a chronological list of the global surveillance disclosures that began in 2013. The disclosures have been largely instigated by revelations from the former American National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

References

  1. ↑ Webb, Maureen (2007). Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World (1. ed.). San Francisco: City Lights Books. ISBN   978-0872864764.
  2. ↑ Andrew Bomford (3 November 1999). "Echelon spy network revealed". BBC. Retrieved April 11, 2015.
  3. ↑ Barton Gellman (24 December 2013). "Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission's accomplished". The Washington Post. Retrieved 25 December 2013. Taken together, the revelations have brought to light a global surveillance system that cast off many of its historical restraints after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet and location records of whole populations.
  4. ↑ "U.S. Electronic Espionage: A Memoir". Ramparts. August 1972. pp. 35–50. The SIGINT community was defined by a TOP SECRET treaty signed in 1947. It was called the UKUSA treaty. The National Security Agency signed for the U.S. and became what's called First Party to the Treaty.
  5. ↑ Norton-Taylor, Richard (2013-08-21). "Surveillance secrecy: the legacy of GCHQ's years under cover". The Guardian. Retrieved 2013-11-30. GCHQ's cover was first blown in 1976 by an article, The Eavesdroppers, published by the London magazine, Time Out.
  6. ↑ Campbell, Duncan (1988-08-12), "Somebody's Listening", New Statesman, archived from the original on 2013-04-20, The Congressional officials were first told of the Thurmond interception by a former employee of the Lockheed Space and Missiles Corporation, Margaret Newsham, who now lives in Sunnyvale, California.
  7. 1 2 "Q&A: What you need to know about Echelon". BBC. 29 May 2001. Retrieved 18 December 2013.
  8. ↑ Shorrock, Tim (April 15, 2013). "The Untold Story: Obama's Crackdown on Whistleblowers: The NSA Four reveal how a toxic mix of cronyism and fraud blinded the agency before 9/11". The Nation.
  9. ↑ Mayer, Jane (May 23, 2011). "The Secret Sharer: Is Thomas Drake an enemy of the state?". The New Yorker.
  10. ↑ Gordon Corera (5 November 2015). "How and why MI5 kept phone data spy programme secret". BBC. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  11. ↑ Tom Whitehead (4 November 2015). "MI5 and GCHQ secretly bulk collecting British public's phone and email records for years, Theresa May reveals". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  12. ↑ "Here's the little-known legal loophole that permitted mass surveillance in the UK". The Register. 9 November 2015. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  13. ↑ James Risen and Eric Lichtblau (December 16, 2005). "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts". The New York Times. Retrieved April 11, 2015.
  14. ↑ "President Visits Troops at Brooke Army Medical Center". White House. January 1, 2006. Retrieved August 15, 2013.
  15. ↑ Leslie Cauley (May 11, 2006). "NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls". [USA Today. Retrieved April 11, 2015.
  16. ↑ Poulsen, Kevin (March 6, 2008). "Whistle-Blower: Feds Have a Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier—Congress Reacts". Wired. Retrieved August 14, 2013.
  17. ↑ D'Andrade, Hugh (October 17, 2007). "Qwest CEO: NSA Punished Qwest for Refusing to Participate in Illegal Surveillance--Pre-9/11!". Deeplinks blog. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 2015-05-21.
  18. ↑ "Wikileaks disclosure shines light on Big Brother". CBS News. December 1, 2011. Retrieved April 11, 2015.
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