 National Security Agency surveillance |
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MYSTIC is a former secret program used since 2009 by the US National Security Agency (NSA) to collect the metadata as well as the content of phone calls from several countries. The program was first revealed in March 2014, based upon documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
MYSTIC operates under the legal authority of Executive Order 12333. [1]
The MYSTIC program started in 2009, but reached its full capability to record the content of phone calls in an entire country for 30 days, in 2011. Documents from 2013 say the surveillance program could be extended to other countries. [1]
On March 18, 2014, the existence of the program was first revealed by The Washington Post , based upon documents leaked by Edward Snowden. It was reported that the NSA had the capability to record all the phone calls from an unidentified foreign country. [1]
On May 19, 2014, the website The Intercept published the name of one country of which the phone calls were recorded, and also identified three other countries of which only the telephony metadata were collected (see below). [2]
Under a sub-program of MYSTIC codenamed SOMALGET, the NSA is actively recording and archiving the content of "virtually every" phone call for thirty days. After thirty days, the recorded calls are overwritten by newer phone calls, although concern was raised that the NSA may start storing collected phone calls indefinitely. [3]
Although NSA analysts can only listen to less than 1% of the phone calls collected under MYSTIC, millions of voice clips are forwarded for processing and storage every month. [1]
A representative of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) criticized the program, stating that the NSA now has the ability to record anything it wants to. It was also noted that MYSTIC is the first revealed NSA surveillance operation capable of monitoring and recording an entire nation's telecommunication system. [4]
As of 2013, the NSA collected the metadata of phone calls from five entire countries, according to a report by The Intercept from May 19, 2014: Mexico, the Philippines, Kenya, the Bahamas and an initially unidentified country. [2]
For the latter two countries, the NSA not only collected the metadata, but also the content of phone calls. This took place under the SOMALGET sub-program.
The NSA documents purport that unlawful mass surveillance of the Bahamas resulted in the apprehension of narcotics traffickers. [5] The US government has also not yet shared information with the Bahamas, despite indicating that it would. [6]
In March 2014, former NSA Deputy Director John C. Inglis had already said that the other country was Iraq, [7] but on May 19, an analysis published on the website Cryptome identified the country as Afghanistan. [8] [9] Several days later, on May 23, WikiLeaks also reported that Afghanistan was the country of which the NSA collected nearly all phone calls. [10]
On September 9, 2015, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that the disclosure of what reporters believed to be the MYSTIC and/or SOMALGET program, led the Afghan government to immediately close down an important intelligence program, that "was the single most important source of force protection and warning for our people in Afghanistan", according to Clapper. [9]
The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a U.S. federal court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Such requests are made most often by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Congress created FISA and its court as a result of the recommendations by the U.S. Senate's Church Committee.
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level 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 existence of the NSA was not revealed until 1975. The NSA has roughly 32,000 employees.
PRISM is a code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from various U.S. internet companies. The program is also known by the SIGAD US-984XN. PRISM collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google LLC under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms. Among other things, the NSA can use these PRISM requests to target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded earlier, and to get data that is easier to handle.
Boundless Informant is a big data analysis and data visualization tool used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA). It gives NSA managers summaries of the NSA's worldwide data collection activities by counting metadata. The existence of this tool was disclosed by documents leaked by Edward Snowden, who worked at the NSA for the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Those disclosed documents were in a direct contradiction to the NSA's assurance to United States Congress that it does not collect any type of data on millions of Americans.
Edward Joseph Snowden is an American former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and subcontractor. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments, and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.
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.
XKeyscore is a secret computer system used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) for searching and analyzing global Internet data, which it collects in real time. The NSA has shared XKeyscore with other intelligence agencies, including the Australian Signals Directorate, Canada's Communications Security Establishment, New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau, Britain's Government Communications Headquarters, Japan's Defense Intelligence Headquarters, and Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst.
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.
Ongoing news reports in the international media have revealed operational details about the Anglophone cryptographic agencies' global surveillance of both foreign and domestic nationals. The reports mostly emanate from a cache of top secret documents leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, which he obtained whilst working for Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the largest contractors for defense and intelligence in the United States. In addition to a trove of U.S. federal documents, Snowden's cache reportedly contains thousands of Australian, British, Canadian and New Zealand intelligence files that he had accessed via the exclusive "Five Eyes" network. In June 2013, the first of Snowden's documents were published simultaneously by The Washington Post and The Guardian, attracting considerable public attention. The disclosure continued throughout 2013, and a small portion of the estimated full cache of documents was later published by other media outlets worldwide, most notably The New York Times, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Der Spiegel (Germany), O Globo (Brazil), Le Monde (France), L'espresso (Italy), NRC Handelsblad, Dagbladet (Norway), El País (Spain), and Sveriges Television (Sweden).
The global surveillance disclosure released to media by Edward Snowden has caused tension in the bilateral relations of the United States with several of its allies and economic partners as well as in its relationship with the European Union. In August 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama announced the creation of "a review group on intelligence and communications technologies" that would brief and later report to him. In December, the task force issued 46 recommendations that, if adopted, would subject the National Security Agency (NSA) to additional scrutiny by the courts, Congress, and the president, and would strip the NSA of the authority to infiltrate American computer systems using "backdoors" in hardware or software. Geoffrey R. Stone, a White House panel member, said there was no evidence that the bulk collection of phone data had stopped any terror attacks.
This is a category of disclosures related to global surveillance.
Global mass surveillance can be defined as the mass surveillance of entire populations across national borders.
MARINA is an NSA database and analysis toolset for intercepted Internet metadata. The database stores metadata up to a year. According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden: "The Marina metadata application tracks a user's browser experience, gathers contact information/content and develops summaries of target" and "[o]f the more distinguishing features, Marina has the ability to look back on the last 365 days' worth of DNI metadata seen by the SIGINT collection system, regardless whether or not it was tasked for collection." [Emphasis in original NSA document.] The stored metadata is mainly used for pattern-of-life analysis. US persons are not exempt because metadata is not considered data by US law.
Klayman v. Obama was an American federal court case concerning the legality of the bulk collection of both phone and Internet metadata by the United States.
U.S. president Barack Obama has received widespread criticism due to his support of government surveillance. President Obama had released many statements on mass surveillance as a result.
American Civil Liberties Union v. James Clapper, No. 13-3994, 959 F.Supp.2d 724, was a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its affiliate, the New York Civil Liberties Union, against the United States federal government that challenged the legality of the National Security Agency's (NSA) bulk phone metadata collection program. On December 27, 2013, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the case, finding that the collection of metadata did not violate the Fourth Amendment. On January 2, 2014, the ACLU appealed the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. On May 7, 2015, the appeals court ruled that Section 215 of the Patriot Act did not authorize the bulk collection of metadata, which judge Gerard E. Lynch called a "staggering" amount of information.
Litigation over global surveillance has occurred in multiple jurisdictions since the global surveillance disclosures of 2013.
Commentary on Edward Snowden's disclosure is part of the reactions to global surveillance disclosures made by Edward Snowden.
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.
ICREACH is an alleged top-secret surveillance-related search engine created by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) after the September 11 attacks.
