Sep 16, 2014 The Snowden files -- the inside story of the world’s most wanted man| Luke Harding| TEDxAthens - Duration: 18:57. TEDx Talks 406,444 views. Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American fugitive, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee, and former contractor for the United States government who copied and leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013.
A new report from The Intercept sheds light on the NSA’s close relationship with communications provider AT&T.
The Intercept identified eight facilities across the U.S. that function as hubs for AT&T’s efforts to collaborate with the intelligence agency. The site first identified one potential hub of this kind in 2017 in lower Manhattan.
The report reveals that eight AT&T data facilities in the U.S. are regarded as high-value sites to the NSA for giving the agency direct “backbone” access to raw data that passes through, including emails, web browsing, social media and any other form of unencrypted online activity. The NSA uses the web of eight AT&T hubs for a surveillance operation code-named FAIRVIEW, a program previously reported by The New York Times. The program, first established in 1985, “involves tapping into international telecommunications cables, routers, and switches” and only coordinates directly with AT&T and not the other major U.S. mobile carriers.
AT&T’s deep involvement with the NSA monitoring program operated under the code name SAGUARO. Messaging, email and other web traffic accessed through the program was made searchable through XKEYSCORE, one of the NSA’s more infamous search-powered surveillance tools.
The Intercept explains how those sites give the NSA access to data beyond just AT&T subscribers:
The data exchange between AT&T and other networks initially takes place outside AT&T’s control, sources said, at third-party data centers that are owned and operated by companies such as California’s Equinix. But the data is then routed – in whole or in part – through the eight AT&T buildings, where the NSA taps into it. By monitoring what it calls the “peering circuits” at the eight sites, the spy agency can collect “not only AT&T’s data, they get all the data that’s interchanged between AT&T’s network and other companies,” according to Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician who worked with the company for 22 years.
The NSA describes these locations as “peering link router complex” sites while AT&T calls them “Service Node Routing Complexes” (SNRCs). The eight complexes are spread across the nation’s major cities, with locations in Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. The Intercept report identifies these facilities:
Among the pinpointed buildings, there is a nuclear blast-resistant, windowless facility in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood; in Washington, D.C., a fortress-like, concrete structure less than half a mile south of the U.S. Capitol; in Chicago, an earthquake-resistant skyscraper in the West Loop Gate area; in Atlanta, a 429-foot art deco structure in the heart of the city’s downtown district; and in Dallas, a cube-like building with narrow windows and large vents on its exterior, located in the Old East district.
… in downtown Los Angeles, a striking concrete tower near the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Staples Center, two blocks from the most important internet exchange in the region; in Seattle, a 15-story building with blacked-out windows and reinforced concrete foundations, near the city’s waterfront; and in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, a building where it was previously claimed that the NSA was monitoring internet traffic from a secure room on the sixth floor.
While these facilities could allow for the monitoring of domestic U.S. traffic, they also process vast quantities of international traffic as it moves across the globe — a fact that likely explains why the NSA would view these AT&T nodes as such high-value sites. The original documents, part of the leaked files provided by Edward Snowden, are available in the original report.
Update: A representative from AT&T provided TechCrunch with the following comment.
“Like all companies, we are required by law to provide information to government and law enforcement entities by complying with court orders, subpoenas, lawful discovery requests and other legal requirements. And, we provide voluntary assistance to law enforcement when a person’s life is in danger and in other immediate, emergency situations. In all cases, we ensure that requests for assistance are valid and that we act in compliance with the law.
You've never heard of XKeyscore, but it definitely knows you. The National Security Agency's top-secret program essentially makes available everything you've ever done on the Internet — browsing history, searches, content of your emails, online chats, even your metadata — all at the tap of the keyboard.
The Guardian exposed the program on Wednesday in a follow-up piece to its groundbreaking report on the NSA's surveillance practices. Shortly after publication, Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former Booz Allen Hamilton employee who worked for the NSA for four years, came forward as the source.
This latest revelation comes from XKeyscore training materials, which Snowden also provided to The Guardian. The NSA sums up the program best: XKeyscore is its 'widest reaching' system for developing intelligence from the Internet.
The program gives analysts the ability to search through the entire database of your information without any prior authorization — no warrant, no court clearance, no signature on a dotted line. An analyst must simply complete a simple onscreen form, and seconds later, your online history is no longer private. The agency claims that XKeyscore covers 'nearly everything a typical user does on the Internet.'
As The Guardian points out, this program crystallizes one of Snowden's most infamous admissions from his video interview on June 10:
'I, sitting at my desk,' said Snowden, could 'wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email.'
While United States officials denied this claim, the XKeyscore program, as the public understands it, proves Snowden's point. The law requires the NSA to obtain FISA warrants on U.S. citizens, but this is pushed aside for Americans with foreign targets — and this program gives the NSA the technology to do so. The training materials claim XKeyscore assisted in capturing 300 terrorists by 2008.
The Guardian article breaks down how the program works with each activity, from email monitoring to chats and browsing history, and includes screenshots from the training materials.
The Guardian reached out to the NSA for comment prior to publication. The agency defended the program, stressing that it was only used to legally obtain information about 'legitimate foreign intelligence targets in response to requirements that our leaders need for information necessary to protect our nation and its interests.'
XKeyscore is used as a part of NSA's lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system.
Allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are simply not true. 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.
Every search by an NSA analyst is fully auditable, to ensure that they are proper and within the law.
These types of programs allow us to collect the information that enables us to perform our missions successfully – to defend the nation and to protect U.S. and allied troops abroad.
XKeyscore is the second black mark on the NSA's record in the past few weeks. The Guardian's first story uncovered PRISM, a highly controversial surveillance program that reportedly allows the security agency to access the servers of major Internet organizations including Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, YouTube and Skype, among others.
Snowden's information led to a public outcry for transparency, and the U.S. government pushed to declassify more information about PRISM in an effort to paint a clearer picture about the program.
Snowden has been charged with espionage. He is currently holed up in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport while his request for asylum is under review by Russian immigration authorities, according to Snowden's lawyer.
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