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.
Leidos, formerly known as Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), is an American defense, aviation, information technology, and biomedical research company headquartered in Reston, Virginia, that provides scientific, engineering, systems integration, and technical services. Leidos merged with Lockheed Martin's IT sector, Information Systems & Global Solutions, in August 2016 to create the defense industry’s largest IT services provider. The Leidos-Lockheed Martin merger is one of the biggest transactions thus far in the consolidation of the defense sector. Leidos contracts extensively with the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Intelligence Community, as well as other U.S. government agencies and select commercial markets.
Mike McConnell is a former vice admiral in the United States Navy. During his naval career he served as Director of the National Security Agency from 1992 to 1996. His civilian career includes serving as the United States Director of National Intelligence from 20 February 2007 to 27 January 2009 during the Bush administration and first week of the Obama administration. He is currently Vice Chairman at Booz Allen Hamilton.
Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation is the parent of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., an American government and military contractor, specializing in intelligence. It is headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in Greater Washington, D.C., with 80 other offices around the globe. The company's stated core business is to provide consulting, analysis and engineering services to public and private sector organizations and nonprofits.
FIRSTFRUITS is a United States counterintelligence program and database that tracks unauthorized disclosures of intelligence material in the news media. The project's goal is to reduce losses of collection capability due to journalists. The database was created by the US Central Intelligence Agency, but then transferred to US National Security Agency. The database has thousands of unofficial and negative articles and authors. Maintenance of the program was outsourced to third parties like Booz Allen Hamilton. The program became known through whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Trailblazer was a United States National Security Agency (NSA) program intended to develop a capability to analyze data carried on communications networks like the Internet. It was intended to track entities using communication methods such as cell phones and e-mail.
The Utah Data Center (UDC), also known as the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center, is a data storage facility for the United States Intelligence Community that is designed to store data estimated to be on the order of exabytes or larger. Its purpose is to support the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), though its precise mission is classified. The National Security Agency (NSA) leads operations at the facility as the executive agent for the Director of National Intelligence. It is located at Camp Williams near Bluffdale, Utah, between Utah Lake and Great Salt Lake and was completed in May 2014 at a cost of $1.5 billion.
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 and Apple 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 and naturalized Russian citizen who was a computer intelligence consultant and whistleblower 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.
USIS (US Investigation Services) was a US corporation that provided security-based information and service solutions to both government and corporate customers, in the United States and abroad. Its corporate headquarters were in Falls Church, Virginia, in Greater Washington, D.C. Training took place in Boyers, Pennsylvania. USIS was a part of Altegrity Inc., a company headquartered in the Falls Church area that was owned by Providence Equity Partners.
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.
Global mass surveillance can be defined as the mass surveillance of entire populations across national borders.
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board report on mass surveillance was issued in January 2014 in light of the global surveillance disclosures of 2013, recommending the US end bulk data collection.
Global surveillance whistleblowers are whistleblowers who provided public knowledge of global surveillance.
The United States is widely considered to have one of the most extensive and sophisticated intelligence network of any nation in the world, with organizations including the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, amongst others. It has conducted numerous espionage operations against foreign countries, including both allies and rivals. Its operations have included the use of industrial espionage, cyber espionage. and mass surveillance.
Harold Thomas Martin III is an American computer scientist and former contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton who pleaded guilty to illegally removing 50 terabytes of data from the National Security Agency. The United States government reportedly failed to note or effectively respond to a number of issues with Martin's security practices and behaviors over a period of 10 to 20 years. The motive for the crime has been a subject of debate, investigators reportedly had difficulty determining if Martin was engaged in conventional espionage or digital hoarding since throughout his decades of work, he appeared not to have ever accessed any of the files once he removed them from government facilities.
Permanent Record is a 2019 autobiography by Edward Snowden, whose revelations sparked a global debate about surveillance. It was published on September 17, 2019, by Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company. The book describes Snowden's childhood as well as his tenure at the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency and his motivations for the leaking of highly classified information in 2013 that revealed global surveillance programs. Snowden also discusses his views on authoritarianism, democracy, and privacy. The writer Joshua Cohen is credited by Snowden for "helping to transform my rambling reminiscences and capsule manifestoes into a book."
