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The servers reportedly store 'full-take data' at the collection sites - meaning that they've captured all of the traffic collected.

The system relies on more than 700 servers that, as of 2008, were located in 150 field sites in the US, Mexico, Brazil, UK, Spain, Russia, Nigeria, Somalia, Pakistan, Japan, Australia, and many other countries. servers collect all of this data for up to five days, and store the metadata of this traffic for up to 45 days. Speaking of retention, the newly released documents show how long the XKeyscore servers have been holding this data, at least as of 2009.

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The 'justification' for the search, as entered in the easy-to-navigate search form: 'german ct targets in pak visiting web forums.'Īnother slide shows how to search for CNEs, encouraging users to 'go way back,' since 'CNE Data doesn't age off'. The slide depicts the search 'germansinpakistn', showing an analyst querying XKeyscore for all individuals in Pakistan visiting specific German language message boards.

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One of the slides in the new set of XKeyscore screen captures and other documents (the full list is at the end of The Intercept's report) shows the incredible breadth of surveillance that can be done, showing a sample query of people based on their location, nationality and browsing histories. What's more, XKeyscore users - which include not only NSA agents but also their counterparts in partnering countries that include Canada, New Zealand and the UK - can get the keys to every wireless network through the gathering of router information.

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That includes pictures, documents, voice calls, webcam photos, web searches, advertising analytics traffic, social media traffic, botnet traffic, logged keystrokes, computer network exploitation (CNE) targeting, intercepted username and password pairs, file uploads to online services, VOIP streams taken from Skype sessions, and more. Rather, it's more like a gigantic sea-dwelling kimodo dragon with double-jointed jaws that snarfs up the data equivalent of Great White Sharks like they were hors d'oeuvres.Īs The Intercept reports, besides suctioning off web traffic from the fiber-optic cables that form the backbone of the world's communications network, including data on people's internet searches, documents, usernames, passwords, emails, and chats, it also absorbs 700,000 voice, fax and video files every day. Newly revealed documents from the Edward Snowden trove show that it's much more than a Google-like search engine for the world's private communications data. Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who leaked the documents on the surveillance programs, has stated that “ encryption works”-and the more people adopt encryption tools, the less likely their use will be deemed suspicious.We've been thinking of the National Security Agency's (NSA's) XKeyscore search engine on the wrong scale. government has been attempting to pressure Internet companies to hand over the keys that would allow it to snoop on encrypted SSL traffic, CNET recently reported.Įither way, using encryption remains the only real option you have when it comes to securing your communications on the Web from systems like XKEYSCORE. The NSA claims it can “discover the users” of VPNs, suggesting, again, that people using encryption or anonymizing tools may find themselves targeted as suspicious merely for attempting to protect the privacy of their communications. The 2008 slides suggest that the NSA is able to decrypt data on people who have turned to a Virtual Private Network in order to anonymize their Internet use by masking their IP address. (Incidentally, you can ensure that you are browsing as much of the Internet as possible using an encrypted connection by installing an add-on called HTTPS Everywhere.)īut encryption is not flawless, and the newly disclosed XKEYSCORE slides seem to illustrate that, too. Between 20, Facebook gave users the ability to turn on HTTPS and it was activated by default for Gmail and Twitter users.

Google searches are now automatically encrypted when you are logged into a Google account, for instance, and if you are not logged in you can direct your browser to.

But since 2008, these websites have broadened their implementation of SSL encryption-which displays in the browser as HTTPS as opposed to unencrypted HTTP-meaning that users’ Internet sessions are more secure and harder to eavesdrop on. Back in 2008, the NSA could certainly use the XKEYSCORE program to mine vast quantities of data directly from networks about Google searches, email correspondence, and Facebook chats. However, the increasing adoption of encryption in recent years may have to some degree thwarted the scope of XKEYSCORE’s capabilities.