Full Text: The United States' Global Surveillance Record
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E-mail Xinhua, May 27, 2014
III. The United States' unscrupulous secret surveillance programs
The revelations about PRISM and other programs demonstrate that the U.S. has mounted the most wide-ranging, costly, long-term surveillance operation in the history of the Internet. The seamless cooperation among the intelligence agencies, government and the private sector, with their big-data processing capabilities, allows the surveillance to extend in scope, seemingly without limit.
1. The world's largest, longest, most costly and wide-ranging surveillance operation
U.S. intelligence has set up a number of programs that are directly linked to cyberspace surveillance, covering both the Internet and telecommunications networks, targeting telephone calls and Internet information, and including the major Internet service providers.
The Utah Data Center set up by the NSA is the world's largest data center, costing 2 billion U.S. dollars to build. It uses secret surveillance systems to collect vast amounts of data which is then processed by code-breaking experts, data-mining professionals and intelligence analysts to obtain useful information.
An article in the Washington Post on Aug. 30, 2013, reported that the budget request of the National Intelligence Program for fiscal 2013 had doubled to 52.6 billion U.S. dollars, of which spending on cyber operations accounted for 4.3 billion U.S. dollars, nearly 8 percent of the total. Surveillance cooperation between U.S. intelligence and private companies, especially Internet service providers, has never stopped. Microsoft was the first to sign up to collect data on Sept. 11, 2007, and Apple the most recent in October, 2012.
German newspaper Der Spiegel reported on a surveillance program codenamed Stateroom, in which the United States, the U.K., Australia and Canada installed surveillance facilities in their embassies to intercept information. The four nations have also signed an intelligence sharing agreement with New Zealand.
2. Secret cooperation among intelligence agencies, government and the private sector is increasing
The nine major U.S. software and hardware providers offer core technology support to U.S. intelligence. Microsoft, the earliest to work with the NSA, opened its Outlook and Hotmail systems to the agency, going so far as to show intelligence agencies how to circumvent encryption of Outlook chat messages before the product was officially launched. Skype, which used to claim that its encryption technology and P2P system could prevent governments from eavesdropping, offered a "backdoor" to the NSA after being bought by Microsoft. Microsoft also worked with U.S. intelligence to help crack the security systems of major companies in order to keep a watch on their customers. It also informed intelligence agencies before publishing details of bugs, so as to give them the opportunity to launch remote attacks.
3. Ramping up the range and depth of surveillance through big-data processing capabilities
The Obama administration made big data strategy a national priority in March 2012. It argued that "big data is the new oil", and that domination and control of data would become a national core capacity, alongside land, sea and air power. The PRISM project is closely associated with big data. The NSA also has a system codenamed Boundless Informant, which can track anyone's activity almost in real time by collecting 97 billion Internet data records during each 30-day period and matching them against credit card and communication records.
4. U.S. intelligence is seeking legal loopholes to overcome legal restraints and take full control of Internet information
The United States used presidential decrees to authorize additional information collection in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. On Oct. 4, 2001, President George W. Bush signed a memorandum to authorize specific surveillance actions over a limited period. Since then, "domestic collection" authorized by the President had been interpreted as the greenlight to gather information from U.S. citizens and people inside the United States. Although debates have subsequently arisen concerning the legitimacy, scope and legal basis of presidential executive orders, the White House, NSA, FBI, and the Department of Justice have reached a consensus on the legality of gathering information on foreign targets.
On May 24, 2006, the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court completely redefined the interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, allowing the FBI and the NSA to share "business records" relevant to terrorist attacks, including the calls databases of telephone companies. Since then, the U.S. government has demanded data from major telephone companies every three months.
In October 2012, President Obama signed Presidential Policy Directive 20, ordering America's national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for U.S. cyber-attacks. The directive also stated that what it called Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) offered unique, unconventional capabilities to advance U.S. national objectives around the world, giving little or no warning to potential adversaries or targets.
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