Biosphere

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere

 

A false-color composite of global oceanic and terrestrial photoautotroph abundance, from September 2001 to August 2017. Provided by the SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and ORBIMAGE.

The biosphere (from Greek βίος bíos "life" and σφαῖρα sphaira "sphere"), also known as the ecosphere (from Greek οἶκος oîkos "environment" and σφαῖρα), is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems. It can also be termed the zone of life on Earth. The biosphere is virtually a closed system with regard to matter, with minimal inputs and outputs. With regard to energy, it is an open system, with photosynthesis capturing solar energy at a rate of around 130 Terawatts per year. However it is a self-regulating system close to energetic equilibrium. By the most general biophysiological definition, the biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements of the lithosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. The biosphere is postulated to have evolved, beginning with a process of biopoiesis (life created naturally from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds) or biogenesis (life created from living matter), at least some 3.5 billion years ago.

In a general sense, biospheres are any closed, self-regulating systems containing ecosystems. This includes artificial biospheres such as Biosphere 2 and BIOS-3, and potentially ones on other planets or moons.

Origin and use of the term

A beach scene on Earth, simultaneously showing the lithosphere (ground), hydrosphere (ocean) and atmosphere (air)

The term "biosphere" was coined by geologist Eduard Suess in 1875, which he defined as the place on Earth's surface where life dwells.

While the concept has a geological origin, it is an indication of the effect of both Charles Darwin and Matthew F. Maury on the Earth sciences. The biosphere's ecological context comes from the 1920s (see Vladimir I. Vernadsky), preceding the 1935 introduction of the term "ecosystem" by Sir Arthur Tansley (see ecology history). Vernadsky defined ecology as the science of the biosphere. It is an interdisciplinary concept for integrating astronomy, geophysics, meteorology, biogeography, evolution, geology, geochemistry, hydrology and, generally speaking, all life and Earth sciences.

Narrow definition

Geochemists define the biosphere as being the total sum of living organisms (the "biomass" or "biota" as referred to by biologists and ecologists). In this sense, the biosphere is but one of four separate components of the geochemical model, the other three being geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. When these four component spheres are combined into one system, it is known as the Ecosphere. This term was coined during the 1960s and encompasses both biological and physical components of the planet.

The Second International Conference on Closed Life Systems defined biospherics as the science and technology of analogs and models of Earth's biosphere; i.e., artificial Earth-like biospheres. Others may include the creation of artificial non-Earth biospheres—for example, human-centered biospheres or a native Martian biosphere—as part of the topic of biospherics.

Earth's biosphere

Age

Stromatolite fossil estimated at 3.2–3.6 billion years old

The earliest evidence for life on Earth includes biogenic graphite found in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks from Western Greenland and microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone from Western Australia. More recently, in 2015, "remains of biotic life" were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. In 2017, putative fossilized microorganisms (or microfossils) were announced to have been discovered in hydrothermal vent precipitates in the Nuvvuagittuq Belt of Quebec, Canada that were as old as 4.28 billion years, the oldest record of life on earth, suggesting "an almost instantaneous emergence of life" after ocean formation 4.4 billion years ago, and not long after the formation of the Earth 4.54 billion years ago. According to biologist Stephen Blair Hedges, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth ... then it could be common in the universe."

Extent

Rüppell's vulture

 

Xenophyophore, a barophilic organism, from the Galapagos Rift.

Every part of the planet, from the polar ice caps to the equator, features life of some kind. Recent advances in microbiology have demonstrated that microbes live deep beneath the Earth's terrestrial surface, and that the total mass of microbial life in so-called "uninhabitable zones" may, in biomass, exceed all animal and plant life on the surface. The actual thickness of the biosphere on earth is difficult to measure. Birds typically fly at altitudes as high as 1,800 m (5,900 ft; 1.1 mi) and fish live as much as 8,372 m (27,467 ft; 5.202 mi) underwater in the Puerto Rico Trench.

There are more extreme examples for life on the planet: Rüppell's vulture has been found at altitudes of 11,300 m (37,100 ft; 7.0 mi); bar-headed geese migrate at altitudes of at least 8,300 m (27,200 ft; 5.2 mi); yaks live at elevations as high as 5,400 m (17,700 ft; 3.4 mi) above sea level; mountain goats live up to 3,050 m (10,010 ft; 1.90 mi). Herbivorous animals at these elevations depend on lichens, grasses, and herbs.

Life forms live in every part of the Earth's biosphere, including soil, hot springs, inside rocks at least 19 km (12 mi) deep underground, the deepest parts of the ocean, and at least 64 km (40 mi) high in the atmosphere. Microorganisms, under certain test conditions, have been observed to survive the vacuum of outer space. The total amount of soil and subsurface bacterial carbon is estimated as 5 × 10¹⁷ g, or the "weight of the United Kingdom". The mass of prokaryote microorganisms—which includes bacteria and archaea, but not the nucleated eukaryote microorganisms—may be as much as 0.8 trillion tons of carbon (of the total biosphere mass, estimated at between 1 and 4 trillion tons). Barophilic marine microbes have been found at more than a depth of 10,000 m (33,000 ft; 6.2 mi) in the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot in the Earth's oceans. In fact, single-celled life forms have been found in the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, by the Challenger Deep, at depths of 11,034 m (36,201 ft; 6.856 mi). Other researchers reported related studies that microorganisms thrive inside rocks up to 580 m (1,900 ft; 0.36 mi) below the sea floor under 2,590 m (8,500 ft; 1.61 mi) of ocean off the coast of the northwestern United States, as well as 2,400 m (7,900 ft; 1.5 mi) beneath the seabed off Japan. Culturable thermophilic microbes have been extracted from cores drilled more than 5,000 m (16,000 ft; 3.1 mi) into the Earth's crust in Sweden, from rocks between 65–75 °C (149–167 °F). Temperature increases with increasing depth into the Earth's crust. The rate at which the temperature increases depends on many factors, including type of crust (continental vs. oceanic), rock type, geographic location, etc. The greatest known temperature at which microbial life can exist is 122 °C (252 °F) (Methanopyrus kandleri Strain 116), and it is likely that the limit of life in the "deep biosphere" is defined by temperature rather than absolute depth. On 20 August 2014, scientists confirmed the existence of microorganisms living 800 m (2,600 ft; 0.50 mi) below the ice of Antarctica. According to one researcher, "You can find microbes everywhere – they're extremely adaptable to conditions, and survive wherever they are."

Our biosphere is divided into a number of biomes, inhabited by fairly similar flora and fauna. On land, biomes are separated primarily by latitude. Terrestrial biomes lying within the Arctic and Antarctic Circles are relatively barren of plant and animal life, while most of the more populous biomes lie near the equator.

Annual variation

Artificial biospheres

Biosphere 2 in Arizona.

Experimental biospheres, also called closed ecological systems, have been created to study ecosystems and the potential for supporting life outside the Earth. These include spacecraft and the following terrestrial laboratories:

• Biosphere 2 in Arizona, United States, 3.15 acres (13,000 m²).
• BIOS-1, BIOS-2 and BIOS-3 at the Institute of Biophysics in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in what was then the Soviet Union.
• Biosphere J (CEEF, Closed Ecology Experiment Facilities), an experiment in Japan.
• Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative (MELiSSA) at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Extraterrestrial biospheres

No biospheres have been detected beyond the Earth; therefore, the existence of extraterrestrial biospheres remains hypothetical. The rare Earth hypothesis suggests they should be very rare, save ones composed of microbial life only. On the other hand, Earth analogs may be quite numerous, at least in the Milky Way galaxy, given the large number of planets. Three of the planets discovered orbiting TRAPPIST-1 could possibly contain biospheres. Given limited understanding of abiogenesis, it is currently unknown what percentage of these planets actually develop biospheres.

Based on observations by the Kepler Space Telescope team, it has been calculated that provided the probability of abiogenesis is higher than 1 to 1000, the closest alien biosphere should be within 100 light-years from the Earth.

It is also possible that artificial biospheres will be created in the future, for example with the terraforming of Mars.

 

Deep carbon cycle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_carbon_cycle 

 

Deep earth carbon

The deep carbon cycle is geochemical cycle (movement) of carbon through the Earth's mantle and core. It forms part of the carbon cycle and is intimately connected to the movement of carbon in the Earth's surface and atmosphere. By returning carbon to the deep Earth, it plays a critical role in maintaining the terrestrial conditions necessary for life to exist. Without it, carbon would accumulate in the atmosphere, reaching extremely high concentrations over long periods of time.

Because the deep Earth is inaccessible to drilling, not much is conclusively known about the role of carbon in it. Nonetheless, several pieces of evidence—many of which come from laboratory simulations of deep Earth conditions—have indicated mechanisms for the element's movement down into the lower mantle, as well as the forms that carbon takes at the extreme temperatures and pressures of this layer. Furthermore, techniques like seismology have led to greater understanding of the potential presence of carbon in the Earth's core. Studies of the composition of basaltic magma and the flux of carbon dioxide out of volcanoes reveals that the amount of carbon in the mantle is greater than that on the Earth's surface by a factor of one thousand.

Quantity of carbon

Carbon cycle

There are about 44,000 gigatonnes of carbon in the atmosphere and oceans. A gigatonne is one billion metric tonnes, equivalent to the mass of water in over 400,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. Large as this quantity is, it only amounts to a small fraction of one percent of Earth's carbon. Over 90% may reside in the core, most of the rest being in the crust and mantle.

In the photosphere of the Sun, carbon is the fourth most abundant element. The Earth likely started with a similar ratio but lost a lot of it to evaporation as it accreted. Even accounting for evaporation, however, the silicates making up the crust and mantle of the Earth have a carbon concentration that is five to ten times less than in CI chondrites, a form of meteor that is believed to represent the composition of the solar nebula before the planets formed. Some of this carbon may have ended up in the core. Depending on the model, carbon is predicted to contribute between 0.2 and 1 percent by weight in the core. Even at the lower concentration, this would account for half Earth's carbon.

Estimates of the carbon content in the upper mantle come from measurements of the chemistry of mid-ocean ridge basalts (MORBs). These must be corrected for degassing of carbon and other elements. Since the Earth formed, the upper mantle has lost 40–90% of its carbon by evaporation and transport to the core in iron compounds. The most rigorous estimate gives a carbon content of 30 parts per million (ppm). The lower mantle is expected to be much less depleted – about 350 ppm.

Lower mantle

Carbon principally enters the mantle in the form of carbonate-rich sediments on tectonic plates of ocean crust, which pull the carbon into the mantle upon undergoing subduction. Not much is known about carbon circulation in the mantle, especially in the deep Earth, but many studies have attempted to augment our understanding of the element's movement and forms within said region. For instance, a 2011 study demonstrated that carbon cycling extends all the way to the lower mantle. The study analysed rare, super-deep diamonds at a site in Juina, Brazil, determining that the bulk composition of some of the diamonds' inclusions matched the expected result of basalt melting and crystallisation under lower mantle temperatures and pressures. Thus, the investigation's findings indicate that pieces of basaltic oceanic lithosphere act as the principal transport mechanism for carbon to Earth's deep interior. These subducted carbonates can interact with lower mantle silicates and metals, eventually forming super-deep diamonds like the one found.

Carbon reservoirs in the mantle, crust and surface.

Reservoir	gigatonne C
Above surface	${\displaystyle (43-45)\times 10^{3}}$
Continental crust and lithosphere	${\displaystyle (0.9-3.1)\times 10^{8}}$
Oceanic crust and lithosphere	${\displaystyle 1.4\times 10^{8}}$
Upper mantle	${\displaystyle <3.2\times 10^{7}}$
Lower mantle	${\displaystyle <1.0\times 10^{9}}$

Carbonates descending to the lower mantle form other compounds besides diamonds. In 2011, carbonates were subjected to an environment similar to that of 1800 km deep into the Earth, well within the lower mantle. Doing so resulted in the formations of magnesite, siderite, and numerous varieties of graphite. Other experiments—as well as petrologic observations—support this claim, finding that magnesite is actually the most stable carbonate phase in the majority of the mantle. This is largely a result of its higher melting temperature. Consequently, scientists have concluded that carbonates undergo reduction as they descend into the mantle before being stabilised at depth by low oxygen fugacity environments. Magnesium, iron, and other metallic compounds act as buffers throughout the process. The presence of reduced, elemental forms of carbon like graphite would indicate that carbon compounds are reduced as they descend into the mantle.

Carbon outgassing processes

Nonetheless, polymorphism alters carbonate compounds' stability at different depths within the Earth. To illustrate, laboratory simulations and density functional theory calculations suggest that tetrahedrally-coordinated carbonates are most stable at depths approaching the core–mantle boundary. A 2015 study indicates that the lower mantle's high pressures cause carbon bonds to transition from sp₂ to sp₃ hybridised orbitals, resulting in carbon tetrahedrally bonding to oxygen. CO₃ trigonal groups cannot form polymerisable networks, while tetrahedral CO₄ can, signifying an increase in carbon's coordination number, and therefore drastic changes in carbonate compounds' properties in the lower mantle. As an example, preliminary theoretical studies suggest that high pressures cause carbonate melt viscosity to increase; the melts' lower mobility as a result of the property changes described is evidence for large deposits of carbon deep into the mantle.

Accordingly, carbon can remain in the lower mantle for long periods of time, but large concentrations of carbon frequently find their way back to the lithosphere. This process, called carbon outgassing, is the result of carbonated mantle undergoing decompression melting, as well as mantle plumes carrying carbon compounds up towards the crust. Carbon is oxidised upon its ascent towards volcanic hotspots, where it is then released as CO₂. This occurs so that the carbon atom matches the oxidation state of the basalts erupting in such areas.

Core

Part of a series on
Biogeochemical cycles

Although the presence of carbon in the Earth's core is well-constrained, recent studies suggest large inventories of carbon could be stored in this region. Shear (S) waves moving through the inner core travel at about fifty percent of the velocity expected for most iron-rich alloys. Considering the core's composition is widely believed to be an alloy of crystalline iron with a small amount of nickel, this seismographic anomaly points to another substance's existence within the region. One theory postulates that such a phenomenon is the result of various light elements, including carbon, in the core. In fact, studies have utilised diamond anvil cells to replicate the conditions in the Earth's core, the results of which indicate that iron carbide (Fe₇C₃) matches the inner core's sound and density velocities considering its temperature and pressure profile. Hence, the iron carbide model could serve as evidence that the core holds as much as 67% of the Earth's carbon. Furthermore, another study found that carbon dissolved in iron and formed a stable phase with the same Fe₇C₃ composition—albeit with a different structure than the one previously mentioned. Hence, although the amount of carbon potentially stored in the Earth's core is not known, recent research indicates that the presence of iron carbides could be consistent with geophysical observations.

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  Movement of oceanic plates—which carry carbon compounds—through the mantle

• 

  Two models of the carbon content in Earth

• 

  Analysis of shear wave velocities has played an integral role in the development of knowledge about carbon's existence in the core

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  Diagram of carbon tetrahedrally bonded to oxygen

Fluxes

Major fluxes of carbon to, from, and within the Earth’s exogenic and endogenic systems
Values give the maximum and minimum fluxes since 200 million years ago. The two major boundaries highlighted are the Mohorovičić discontinuity (crust-mantle boundary; Moho) and the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB).

 

Biogeochemical cycle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogeochemical_cycle 

A biogeochemical cycle is the pathway by which a chemical substance cycles (is turned over or moves through) the biotic and the abiotic compartments of Earth. The biotic compartment is the biosphere and the abiotic compartments are the atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere. There are biogeochemical cycles for chemical elements, such as for calcium, carbon, hydrogen, mercury, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, selenium, iron and sulfur, as well as molecular cycles, such as for water and silica. There are also macroscopic cycles, such as the rock cycle, and human-induced cycles for synthetic compounds such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). In some cycles there are reservoirs where a substance can remain or be sequestered for a long period of time.

Overview

Generalized biogeochemical cycle 

Energy flows directionally through ecosystems, entering as sunlight (or inorganic molecules for chemoautotrophs) and leaving as heat during the many transfers between trophic levels. However, the matter that makes up living organisms is conserved and recycled. The six most common elements associated with organic molecules—carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur—take a variety of chemical forms and may exist for long periods in the atmosphere, on land, in water, or beneath the Earth's surface. Geologic processes, such as weathering, erosion, water drainage, and the subduction of the continental plates, all play a role in this recycling of materials. Because geology and chemistry have major roles in the study of this process, the recycling of inorganic matter between living organisms and their environment is called a biogeochemical cycle.

The six aforementioned elements are used by organisms in a variety of ways. Hydrogen and oxygen are found in water and organic molecules, both of which are essential to life. Carbon is found in all organic molecules, whereas nitrogen is an important component of nucleic acids and proteins. Phosphorus is used to make nucleic acids and the phospholipids that comprise biological membranes. Sulfur is critical to the three-dimensional shape of proteins. The cycling of these elements is interconnected. For example, the movement of water is critical for leaching sulfur and phosphorus into rivers which can then flow into oceans. Minerals cycle through the biosphere between the biotic and abiotic components and from one organism to another.

Ecological systems (ecosystems) have many biogeochemical cycles operating as a part of the system, for example, the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, etc. All chemical elements occurring in organisms are part of biogeochemical cycles. In addition to being a part of living organisms, these chemical elements also cycle through abiotic factors of ecosystems such as water (hydrosphere), land (lithosphere), and/or the air (atmosphere).

The living factors of the planet can be referred to collectively as the biosphere. All the nutrients—such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur—used in ecosystems by living organisms are a part of a closed system; therefore, these chemicals are recycled instead of being lost and replenished constantly such as in an open system.

The diagram on the right shows a generalised biogeochemical cycle. The major parts of the biosphere are connected by the flow of chemical elements and compounds. In many of these cycles, the biota plays an important role. Matter from the Earth's interior is released by volcanoes. The atmosphere exchanges some compounds and elements rapidly with the biota and oceans. Exchanges of materials between rocks, soils, and the oceans are generally slower by comparison.

The flow of energy in an ecosystem is an open system; the sun constantly gives the planet energy in the form of light while it is eventually used and lost in the form of heat throughout the trophic levels of a food web. Carbon is used to make carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, the major sources of food energy. These compounds are oxidized to release carbon dioxide, which can be captured by plants to make organic compounds. The chemical reaction is powered by the light energy of the sun.

Sunlight is required to combine carbon with hydrogen and oxygen into an energy source, but ecosystems in the deep sea, where no sunlight can penetrate, obtain energy from sulfur. Hydrogen sulfide near hydrothermal vents can be utilized by organisms such as the giant tube worm. In the sulfur cycle, sulfur can be forever recycled as a source of energy. Energy can be released through the oxidation and reduction of sulfur compounds (e.g., oxidizing elemental sulfur to sulfite and then to sulfate).

• 

  Examples of major biogeochemical processes
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  The oceanic whale pump showing how whales cycle nutrients through the ocean water column

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  The implications of shifts in the global carbon cycle due to human activity are concerning scientists.

Although the Earth constantly receives energy from the sun, its chemical composition is essentially fixed, as the additional matter is only occasionally added by meteorites. Because this chemical composition is not replenished like energy, all processes that depend on these chemicals must be recycled. These cycles include both the living biosphere and the nonliving lithosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere.

Biogeochemical cycles can be contrasted with geochemical cycles. The latter deals only with crustal and subcrustal reservoirs even though some process from both overlap.

Reservoirs

The chemicals are sometimes held for long periods of time in one place. This place is called a reservoir, which, for example, includes such things as coal deposits that are storing carbon for a long period of time. When chemicals are held for only short periods of time, they are being held in exchange pools. Examples of exchange pools include plants and animals.

Plants and animals utilize carbon to produce carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, which can then be used to build their internal structures or to obtain energy. Plants and animals temporarily use carbon in their systems and then release it back into the air or surrounding medium. Generally, reservoirs are abiotic factors whereas exchange pools are biotic factors. Carbon is held for a relatively short time in plants and animals in comparison to coal deposits. The amount of time that a chemical is held in one place is called its residence time or turnover time (also called the renewal time or exit age).

Box models

Basic one-box model

Box models are widely used to model biogeochemical systems. Box models are simplified versions of complex systems, reducing them to boxes (or storage reservoirs) for chemical materials, linked by material fluxes (flows). Simple box models have a small number of boxes with properties, such as volume, that do not change with time. The boxes are assumed to behave as if they were mixed homogeneously. These models are often used to derive analytical formulas describing the dynamics and steady-state abundance of the chemical species involved.

The diagram at the right shows a basic one-box model. The reservoir contains the amount of material M under consideration, as defined by chemical, physical or biological properties. The source Q is the flux of material into the reservoir, and the sink S is the flux of material out of the reservoir. The budget is the check and balance of the sources and sinks affecting material turnover in a reservoir. The reservoir is in a steady state if Q = S, that is, if the sources balance the sinks and there is no change over time.

The residence or turnover time is the average time material spends resident in the reservoir. If the reservoir is in a steady state, this is the same as the time it takes to fill or drain the reservoir. Thus, if τ is the turnover time, then τ = M/S. The equation describing the rate of change of content in a reservoir is

${\displaystyle {\frac {dM}{dt}}=Q-S=Q-{\frac {M}{\tau }}}$

When two or more reservoirs are connected, the material can be regarded as cycling between the reservoirs, and there can be predictable patterns to the cyclic flow. More complex multibox models are usually solved using numerical techniques.

Simple three box model
simplified budget of ocean carbon flows 

More complex model with many interacting boxes
export and burial rates of terrestrial organic carbon in the ocean 

Measurement units

Global biogeochemical box models usually measure:
            — reservoir masses in petagrams (Pg)
            — flow fluxes in petagrams per year (Pg yr⁻¹)
 ________________________________________________
 one petagram = 10¹⁵ grams = one gigatonne = one billion (10⁹) tonnes

The diagram on the left above shows a simplified budget of ocean carbon flows. It is composed of three simple interconnected box models, one for the euphotic zone, one for the ocean interior or dark ocean, and one for ocean sediments. In the euphotic zone, net phytoplankton production is about 50 Pg C each year. About 10 Pg is exported to the ocean interior while the other 40 Pg is respired. Organic carbon degradation occurs as particles (marine snow) settle through the ocean interior. Only 2 Pg eventually arrives at the seafloor, while the other 8 Pg is respired in the dark ocean. In sediments, the time scale available for degradation increases by orders of magnitude with the result that 90% of the organic carbon delivered is degraded and only 0.2 Pg C yr⁻¹ is eventually buried and transferred from the biosphere to the geosphere.

The diagram on the right above shows a more complex model with many interacting boxes. Reservoir masses here represents carbon stocks, measured in Pg C. Carbon exchange fluxes, measured in Pg C yr⁻¹, occur between the atmosphere and its two major sinks, the land and the ocean. The black numbers and arrows indicate the reservoir mass and exchange fluxes estimated for the year 1750, just before the Industrial Revolution. The red arrows (and associated numbers) indicate the annual flux changes due to anthropogenic activities, averaged over the 2000–2009 time period. They represent how the carbon cycle has changed since 1750. Red numbers in the reservoirs represent the cumulative changes in anthropogenic carbon since the start of the Industrial Period, 1750–2011.

Compartments

Biosphere

Role of marine organisms in biogeochemical cycling in the Southern Ocean 

 

Main article: Biosphere

Microorganisms drive much of the biogeochemical cycling in the earth system.

Atmosphere

Main article: Atmosphere

Hydrosphere

Main article: Hydrosphere

The global ocean covers more than 70% of the Earth's surface and is remarkably heterogeneous. Marine productive areas, and coastal ecosystems comprise a minor fraction of the ocean in terms of surface area, yet have an enormous impact on global biogeochemical cycles carried out by microbial communities, which represent 90% of the ocean's biomass. Work in recent years has largely focused on cycling of carbon and macronutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and silicate: other important elements such as sulfur or trace elements have been less studied, reflecting associated technical and logistical issues. Increasingly, these marine areas, and the taxa that form their ecosystems, are subject to significant anthropogenic pressure, impacting marine life and recycling of energy and nutrients. A key example is that of cultural eutrophication, where agricultural runoff leads to nitrogen and phosphorus enrichment of coastal ecosystems, greatly increasing productivity resulting in algal blooms, deoxygenation of the water column and seabed, and increased greenhouse gas emissions, with direct local and global impacts on nitrogen and carbon cycles. However, the runoff of organic matter from the mainland to coastal ecosystems is just one of a series of pressing threats stressing microbial communities due to global change. Climate change has also resulted in changes in the cryosphere, as glaciers and permafrost melt, resulting in intensified marine stratification, while shifts of the redox-state in different biomes are rapidly reshaping microbial assemblages at an unprecedented rate.

Global change is, therefore, affecting key processes including primary productivity, CO₂ and N₂ fixation, organic matter respiration/remineralization, and the sinking and burial deposition of fixed CO₂. In addition to this, oceans are experiencing an acidification process, with a change of ~0.1 pH units between the pre-industrial period and today, affecting carbonate/bicarbonate buffer chemistry. In turn, acidification has been reported to impact planktonic communities, principally through effects on calcifying taxa. There is also evidence for shifts in the production of key intermediary volatile products, some of which have marked greenhouse effects (e.g., N₂O and CH₄, reviewed by Breitburg in 2018, due to the increase in global temperature, ocean stratification and deoxygenation, driving as much as 25 to 50% of nitrogen loss from the ocean to the atmosphere in the so-called oxygen minimum zones  or anoxic marine zones, driven by microbial processes. Other products, that are typically toxic for the marine nekton, including reduced sulfur species such as H₂S, have a negative impact for marine resources like fisheries and coastal aquaculture. While global change has accelerated, there has been a parallel increase in awareness of the complexity of marine ecosystems, and especially the fundamental role of microbes as drivers of ecosystem functioning.

Lithosphere

Main article: Lithosphere

Fast and slow cycles

There are fast and slow biogeochemical cycles. Fast cycle operate in the biosphere and slow cycles operate in rocks. Fast or biological cycles can complete within years, moving substances from atmosphere to biosphere, then back to the atmosphere. Slow or geological cycles can take millions of years to complete, moving substances through the Earth's crust between rocks, soil, ocean and atmosphere.

As an example, the fast carbon cycle is illustrated in the diagram below on the left. This cycle involves relatively short-term biogeochemical processes between the environment and living organisms in the biosphere. It includes movements of carbon between the atmosphere and terrestrial and marine ecosystems, as well as soils and seafloor sediments. The fast cycle includes annual cycles involving photosynthesis and decadal cycles involving vegetative growth and decomposition. The reactions of the fast carbon cycle to human activities will determine many of the more immediate impacts of climate change.

The fast cycle operates through the biosphere, including exchanges between land, atmosphere, and oceans. The yellow numbers are natural fluxes of carbon in billions of tons (gigatons) per year. Red are human contributions and white are stored carbon.

The slow cycle operates through rocks, including volcanic and tectonic activity

The slow cycle is illustrated in the diagram above on the right. It involves medium to long-term geochemical processes belonging to the rock cycle. The exchange between the ocean and atmosphere can take centuries, and the weathering of rocks can take millions of years. Carbon in the ocean precipitates to the ocean floor where it can form sedimentary rock and be subducted into the earth's mantle. Mountain building processes result in the return of this geologic carbon to the Earth's surface. There the rocks are weathered and carbon is returned to the atmosphere by degassing and to the ocean by rivers. Other geologic carbon returns to the ocean through the hydrothermal emission of calcium ions. In a given year between 10 and 100 million tonnes of carbon moves around this slow cycle. This includes volcanoes returning geologic carbon directly to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. However, this is less than one percent of the carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.

Deep cycles

Further information: Deep carbon cycle

The terrestrial subsurface is the largest reservoir of carbon on earth, containing 14–135 Pg of carbon  and 2–19% of all biomass. Microorganisms drive organic and inorganic compound transformations in this environment and thereby control biogeochemical cycles. Current knowledge of the microbial ecology of the subsurface is primarily based on 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequences. Recent estimates show that <8% of 16S rRNA sequences in public databases derive from subsurface organisms  and only a small fraction of those are represented by genomes or isolates. Thus, there is remarkably little reliable information about microbial metabolism in the subsurface. Further, little is known about how organisms in subsurface ecosystems are metabolically interconnected. Some cultivation-based studies of syntrophic consortia and small-scale metagenomic analyses of natural communities suggest that organisms are linked via metabolic handoffs: the transfer of redox reaction products of one organism to another. However, no complex environments have been dissected completely enough to resolve the metabolic interaction networks that underpin them. This restricts the ability of biogeochemical models to capture key aspects of the carbon and other nutrient cycles. New approaches such as genome-resolved metagenomics, an approach that can yield a comprehensive set of draft and even complete genomes for organisms without the requirement for laboratory isolation  have the potential to provide this critical level of understanding of biogeochemical processes.

Some examples

Some of the more well-known biogeochemical cycles are shown below:

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  Carbon cycle

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  Nitrogen cycle

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  Nutrient cycle

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  Oxygen cycle

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  Phosphorus cycle

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  Sulfur cycle

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  Rock cycle

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  Water cycle

Many biogeochemical cycles are currently being studied for the first time. Climate change and human impacts are drastically changing the speed, intensity, and balance of these relatively unknown cycles, which include:

• the mercury cycle, and
• the human-caused cycle of PCBs.

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  Chloroplasts conduct photosynthesis in plant cells and other eukaryotic organisms.

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  Kerogen cycle

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  Coal is a reservoir of carbon

Biogeochemical cycles always involve active equilibrium states: a balance in the cycling of the element between compartments. However, overall balance may involve compartments distributed on a global scale.

As biogeochemical cycles describe the movements of substances on the entire globe, the study of these is inherently multidisciplinary. The carbon cycle may be related to research in ecology and atmospheric sciences. Biochemical dynamics would also be related to the fields of geology and pedology.

Vladimir Vernadsky 1934
father of biogeochemistry 

The chemistry of the arena of life — that is Earth’s biogeochemistry — will be at the center of how well we do, and all biogeochemists should strive to articulate that message clearly and forcefully to the public and to leaders of society, who must know our message to do their job well.

— William H. Schlesinger 2004 

 

Global surveillance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance 

 

Global surveillance

Global mass surveillance can be defined as the mass surveillance of entire populations across national borders.

Its existence was not widely acknowledged by governments and the mainstream media until the global surveillance disclosures by Edward Snowden triggered a debate about the right to privacy in the Digital Age.

Its roots can be traced back to the middle of the 20th century when the UKUSA Agreement was jointly enacted by the United Kingdom and the United States, which later expanded to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to create the present Five Eyes alliance. The alliance developed cooperation arrangements with several "third-party" nations. Eventually, this resulted in the establishment of a global surveillance network, code-named "ECHELON" (1971).

Historical background

Main article: Origins of global surveillance

The origins of global surveillance can be traced back to the late 1940s after the UKUSA Agreement was collaboratively enacted by the United Kingdom and the United States, which eventually culminated in the creation of the global surveillance network code-named "ECHELON" in 1971.

In the aftermath of the 1970s Watergate affair and a subsequent congressional inquiry led by Sen. Frank Church, it was revealed that the NSA, in collaboration with Britain's GCHQ, had routinely intercepted the international communications of prominent anti-Vietnam War leaders such as Jane Fonda and Dr. Benjamin Spock. Decades later, a multi-year investigation by the European Parliament highlighted the NSA's role in economic espionage in a report entitled 'Development of Surveillance Technology and Risk of Abuse of Economic Information', in 1999.

However, for the general public, it was a series of detailed disclosures of internal NSA documents in June 2013 that first revealed the massive extent of the NSA's spying, both foreign and domestic. Most of these were leaked by an ex-contractor, Edward Snowden. Even so, a number of these older global surveillance programs such as PRISM, XKeyscore, and Tempora were referenced in the 2013 release of thousands of documents. Many countries around the world, including Western Allies and member states of NATO, have been targeted by the "Five Eyes" strategic alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the United States—five English-speaking Western countries aiming to achieve Total Information Awareness by mastering the Internet with analytical tools such as the Boundless Informant. As confirmed by the NSA's director Keith B. Alexander on 26 September 2013, the NSA collects and stores all phone records of all American citizens. Much of the data is kept in large storage facilities such as the Utah Data Center, a US $1.5 billion megaproject referred to by The Wall Street Journal as a "symbol of the spy agency's surveillance prowess."

Today, this global surveillance system continues to grow. It now collects so much digital detritus — e-mails, calls, text messages, cellphone location data and a catalog of computer viruses - that the N.S.A. is building a 1-million-square-foot facility in the Utah desert to store and process it.

— The New York Times (August 2012)

On 6 June 2013, Britain's The Guardian newspaper began publishing a series of revelations by an as yet unknown American whistleblower, revealed several days later to be ex-CIA and ex-NSA-contracted systems analyst Edward Snowden. Snowden gave a cache of documents to two journalists, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. Greenwald later estimated that the cache contains 15,000–20,000 documents, some very large and detailed, and some very small. In over two subsequent months of publications, it became clear that the NSA had operated a complex web of spying programs that allowed it to intercept Internet and telephone conversations from over a billion users from dozens of countries around the world. Specific revelations were made about China, the European Union, Latin America, Iran and Pakistan, and Australia and New Zealand, however, the published documentation reveals that many of the programs indiscriminately collected bulk information directly from central servers and Internet backbones, which almost invariably carry and reroute information from distant countries.

Due to this central server and backbone monitoring, many of the programs overlapped and interrelated with one another. These programs were often carried out with the assistance of US entities such as the United States Department of Justice and the FBI, were sanctioned by US laws such as the FISA Amendments Act, and the necessary court orders for them were signed by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Some of the NSA's programs were directly aided by national and foreign intelligence agencies, Britain's GCHQ and Australia's ASD, as well as by large private telecommunications and Internet corporations, such as Verizon, Telstra, Google, and Facebook.

Snowden's disclosures of the NSA's surveillance activities are a continuation of news leaks which have been ongoing since the early 2000s. One year after the September 11, 2001, attacks, former U.S. intelligence official William Binney was publicly critical of the NSA for spying on U.S. citizens.

Further disclosures followed. On 16 December 2005, The New York Times published a report under the headline "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts." In 2006, further evidence of the NSA's domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens was provided by USA Today. The newspaper released a report on 11 May 2006, regarding the NSA's "massive database" of phone records collected from "tens of millions" of U.S. citizens. According to USA Today, these phone records were provided by several telecom companies such as AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth. In 2008, the security analyst Babak Pasdar revealed the existence of the so-called "Quantico circuit" that he and his team discovered in 2003 when brought on to update the carrier's security system. The circuit provided the U.S. federal government with a backdoor into the network of an unnamed wireless provider, which was later independently identified as Verizon.

Snowden's disclosures

Further information: Global surveillance disclosures (2013–present)

Snowden made his first contact with journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian in late 2012. The timeline of mass surveillance disclosures by Snowden continued throughout the entire year of 2013.

By category

Main article: Global surveillance by category

Documents leaked by Snowden in 2013 include court orders, memos, and policy documents related to a wide range of surveillance activities.

Purposes

According to the April 2013 summary of documents leaked by Snowden, other than to combat terrorism, these surveillance programs were employed to assess the foreign policy and economic stability of other countries, and to gather "commercial secrets".

In a statement addressed to the National Congress of Brazil in early August 2013, journalist Glenn Greenwald maintained that the U.S. government had used counter-terrorism as a pretext for clandestine surveillance in order to compete with other countries in the "business, industrial and economic fields". In a December 2013 letter to the Brazilian government, Snowden wrote that "These programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power." According to White House panel member NSA didn't stop any terrorist attack. However NSA chief said, that surveillance programs stopped 54 terrorist plots.

In an interview with Der Spiegel published on 12 August 2013, former NSA Director Michael Hayden admitted that "We (the NSA) steal secrets. We're number one in it". Hayden also added: "We steal stuff to make you safe, not to make you rich".

According to documents seen by the news agency Reuters, these "secrets" were subsequently funneled to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Federal agents are then instructed to "recreate" the investigative trail in order to "cover up" where the information originated.

According to the congressional testimony of Keith B. Alexander, Director of the National Security Agency, one of the purposes of its data collection is to store all the phone records inside a place that can be searched and assessed at all times. When asked by Senator Mark Udall if the goal of the NSA is to collect the phone records of all Americans, Alexander replied, "Yes, I believe it is in the nation's best interest to put all the phone records into a lockbox that we could search when the nation needs to do it."

Targets and methods

Collection of metadata and other content

In the United States, the NSA is collecting the phone records of more than 300 million Americans. The international surveillance tool XKeyscore allows government analysts to search through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals. Britain's global surveillance program Tempora intercepts the fibre-optic cables that form the backbone of the Internet. Under the NSA's PRISM surveillance program, data that has already reached its final destination would be directly harvested from the servers of the following U.S. service providers: Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple Inc.

Contact chaining

The New York Times, citing documents leaked by Snowden, reported in September 2013 on the NSA's "push to exploit phone and e-mail data of Americans after it lifted restrictions in 2010", which enables "large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata". This slide from an NSA presentation shows one of the methods in which the agency uses e-mail and phone data to analyze the relationship network of a target. According to The Times, the NSA can "augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data". Such types of data were collected from U.S. citizens as well as foreign nationals.

The NSA uses the analysis of phone call and e-mail logs of American citizens to create sophisticated graphs of their social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information.

According to top secret NSA documents leaked by Snowden, during a single day in 2012, the NSA collected e-mail address books from:

• 22,881 Gmail accounts
• 82,857 Facebook accounts
• 105,068 Hotmail accounts
• 444,743 Yahoo! accounts

Each day, the NSA collects contacts from an estimated 500,000 buddy lists on live-chat services as well as from the inbox displays of Web-based e-mail accounts. Taken together, the data enables the NSA to draw detailed maps of a person's life based on their personal, professional, religious and political connections.

Data transfer

Federal agencies in the United States: Data gathered by these surveillance programs is routinely shared with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In addition, the NSA supplies domestic intercepts to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and other law enforcement agencies.

Foreign countries: As a result of the NSA's secret treaties with foreign countries, data gathered by its surveillance programs are routinely shared with countries who are signatories to the UKUSA Agreement. These foreign countries also help to operate several NSA programs such as XKEYSCORE.

Financial payments monitoring

A special branch of the NSA called "Follow the Money" (FTM) monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions and later stores the collected data in the NSA's financial databank, "Tracfin".

Mobile phone location tracking

Mobile phone tracking refers to the act of attaining the position and coordinates of a mobile phone. According to The Washington Post, the NSA has been tracking the locations of mobile phones from all over the world by tapping into the cables that connect mobile networks globally and that serve U.S. cellphones as well as foreign ones. In the process of doing so, the NSA collects more than 5 billion records of phone locations on a daily basis. This enables NSA analysts to map cellphone owners' relationships by correlating their patterns of movement over time with thousands or millions of other phone users who cross their paths.

In order to decode private conversations, the NSA has cracked the most commonly used cellphone encryption technology, A5/1. According to a classified document leaked by Snowden, the agency can "process encrypted A5/1" even when it has not acquired an encryption key. In addition, the NSA uses various types of cellphone infrastructure, such as the links between carrier networks, to determine the location of a cellphone user tracked by Visitor Location Registers.

Infiltration of smartphones

As worldwide sales of smartphones grew rapidly, the NSA decided to take advantage of the smartphone boom. This is particularly advantageous because the smartphone contains a variety of data sets that would interest an intelligence agency, such as social contacts, user behaviour, interests, location, photos and credit card numbers and passwords.

According to the documents leaked by Snowden, the NSA has set up task forces assigned to several smartphone manufacturers and operating systems, including Apple Inc.'s iPhone and iOS operating system, as well as Google's Android mobile operating system. Similarly, Britain's GCHQ assigned a team to study and crack the BlackBerry. In addition, there are smaller NSA programs, known as "scripts", that can perform surveillance on 38 different features of the iOS 3 and iOS 4 operating systems. These include the mapping feature, voicemail and photos, as well as Google Earth, Facebook and Yahoo! Messenger.

Infiltration of commercial data centers

In contrast to the PRISM surveillance program, which is a front-door method of access that is nominally approved by the FISA court, the MUSCULAR surveillance program is noted to be "unusually aggressive" in its usage of unorthodox hacking methods to infiltrate Yahoo! and Google data centres around the world. As the program is operated overseas (United Kingdom), the NSA presumes that anyone using a foreign data link is a foreigner, and is, therefore, able to collect content and metadata on a previously unknown scale from U.S. citizens and residents. According to the documents leaked by Snowden, the MUSCULAR surveillance program is jointly operated by the NSA and Britain's GCHQ agency.

Infiltration of anonymous networks

The Five Eyes have made repeated attempts to spy on Internet users communicating in secret via the anonymity network Tor. Several of their clandestine operations involve the implantation of malicious code into the computers of anonymous Tor users who visit infected websites. In some cases, the NSA and GCHQ have succeeded in blocking access to the anonymous network, diverting Tor users to insecure channels. In other cases, the NSA and the GCHQ were able to uncover the identity of these anonymous users.

Monitoring of hotel reservation systems

Under the Royal Concierge surveillance program, Britain's GCHQ agency uses an automated monitoring system to infiltrate the reservation systems of at least 350 luxury hotels in many different parts of the world. Other related surveillance programs involve the wiretapping of room telephones and fax machines used in targeted hotels, as well as the monitoring of computers, hooked up to the hotel network.

Virtual reality surveillance

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have been conducting surveillance on the networks of many online games, including massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft, as well as virtual worlds such as Second Life, and the Xbox gaming console.

Political Espionage

According to the April 2013 summary of disclosures, the NSA defined its "intelligence priorities" on a scale of "1" (highest interest) to "5" (lowest interest). It classified about 30 countries as "3rd parties", with whom it cooperates but also spies on:

• Main targets: China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan were ranked highly on the NSA's list of spying priorities, followed by France, Germany, Japan, and Brazil. The European Union's "international trade" and "economic stability" are also of interest. Other high priority targets include Cuba, Israel, and North Korea.
• Irrelevant: From a US intelligence perspective, countries such as Cambodia, Laos and Nepal were largely irrelevant, as were governments of smaller European Union countries such as Finland, Denmark, Croatia and the Czech Republic.

Other prominent targets included members and adherents of the Internet group known as "Anonymous", as well as potential whistleblowers. According to Snowden, the NSA targeted reporters who wrote critically about the government after 9/11.

As part of a joint operation with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the NSA deployed secret eavesdropping posts in eighty U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide. The headquarters of NATO were also used by NSA experts to spy on the European Union.

In 2013, documents provided by Edward Snowden revealed that the following intergovernmental organizations, diplomatic missions, and government ministries have been subjected to surveillance by the "Five Eyes":

Country/ Organization	Target	Method(s)
Brazil	Ministry of Energy	Collection of metadata records by the Communications Security Establishment of Canada (CSEC)
France	Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs	Infiltration of virtual private networks (VPN)
	Embassy of France in Washington, D.C.
Germany	Embassy of Germany in Rwanda
Italy	Embassy of Italy in Washington, D.C.	Installation of physical implants Copying of entire hard disk drives
India	Embassy of India in Washington, D.C.	Copying entire hard disk drives Picking data from screenshots
	Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations
Mexico	Secretariat of Public Security	Hacking of e-mail accounts as part of an operation code-named "Whitetamale"
European Union	Council of the European Union in Brussels	Installation of covert listening devices Hacking and infiltration of virtual private networks Disk cloning
	Delegation to the United Nations in New York
	Delegation to the United States in Washington, D.C.
United Nations	United Nations Headquarters	Hacking of encrypted communications Infiltration of internal video conferences
	International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
	United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
	United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

International Cooperation

The "Five Eyes" of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States

During World War II, the BRUSA Agreement was signed by the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom for the purpose of intelligence sharing. This was later formalized in the UKUSA Agreement of 1946 as a secret treaty. The full text of the agreement was released to the public on 25 June 2010.

Although the treaty was later revised to include other countries such as Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Turkey, and the Philippines, most of the information sharing has been performed by the so-called "Five Eyes", a term referring to the following English-speaking western democracies and their respective intelligence agencies:

• – The Defence Signals Directorate of Australia
• – The Communications Security Establishment of Canada
• – The Government Communications Security Bureau of New Zealand
• – The Government Communications Headquarters of the United Kingdom, which is widely considered to be a leader in traditional spying due to its influence on countries that were once part of the British Empire.
• – The National Security Agency of the United States, which has the biggest budget and the most advanced technical abilities among the "five eyes".

Top secret documents leaked by Snowden revealed that the "Five Eyes" have gained access to the majority of Internet and telephone communications flowing throughout Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world.

Left: SEA-ME-WE 3, which runs across the Afro-Eurasian supercontinent from Japan to Northern Germany, is one of the most important submarine cables accessed by the "Five Eyes". Singapore, a former British colony in the Asia-Pacific region (blue dot), plays a vital role in intercepting Internet and telecommunications traffic heading from Australia/Japan to Europe, and vice versa. An intelligence-sharing agreement between Singapore and Australia allows the rest of the "Five Eyes" to gain access to SEA-ME-WE 3.
Right: TAT-14, a telecommunications cable linking Europe with the United States, was identified as one of few assets of "Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources" of the US on foreign territory. In 2013, it was revealed that British officials "pressured a handful of telecommunications and Internet companies" to allow the British government to gain access to TAT-14.

NSA lists "Approved SIGINT countries" which are divided into two groups by their cooperation level with the NSA.

  Second Parties

  Third Parties

According to the leaked documents, aside from the Five Eyes, most other Western countries have also participated in the NSA surveillance system and are sharing information with each other. In the documents the NSA lists "approved SIGINT partners" which are partner countries in addition to the Five Eyes. Glenn Greenwald said that the "NSA often maintains these partnerships by paying its partner to develop certain technologies and engage in surveillance, and can thus direct how the spying is carried out." These partner countries are divided into two groups, "Second Parties" and "Third Parties". The Second Parties are doing comprehensive cooperation with the NSA, and the Third Parties are doing focused cooperation. However, being a partner of the NSA does not automatically exempt a country from being targeted by the NSA itself. According to an internal NSA document leaked by Snowden, "We (the NSA) can, and often do, target the signals of most 3rd party foreign partners."

Australia

Pine Gap, near the Australian town of Alice Springs, is run by the CIA and it is part of the global surveillance program ECHELON.

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), formerly known as the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), shares information on Australian citizens with the other members of the UKUSA Agreement. According to a 2008 Five Eyes document leaked by Snowden, data of Australian citizens shared with foreign countries include "bulk, unselected, unminimised metadata" as well as "medical, legal or religious information".

In close cooperation with other members of the Five Eyes community, the ASD runs secret surveillance facilities in many parts of Southeast Asia without the knowledge of Australian diplomats. In addition, the ASD cooperates with the Security and Intelligence Division (SID) of the Republic of Singapore in an international operation to intercept underwater telecommunications cables across the Eastern Hemisphere and the Pacific Ocean.

In March 2017 it was reported that, on advice from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, more than 500 Iraqi and Syrian refugees, have been refused entry to Australia, in the last year.

Canada

The Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) offers the NSA resources for advanced collection, processing, and analysis. It has set up covert sites at the request of NSA. The US-Canada SIGNT relationship dates back to a secret alliance formed during World War II, and was formalized in 1949 under the CANUSA Agreement.

On behalf of the NSA, the CSEC opened secret surveillance facilities in 20 countries around the world.

As well, the Communications Security Establishment Canada has been revealed, following the global surveillance disclosures to be engaging in surveillance on Wifi Hotspots of major Canadian Airports, collecting meta-data to use for engaging in surveillance on travelers, even days after their departure from said airports.

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  The NSA's relationship with Canada's CSEC

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  NSA document on a mass surveillance operation with Canada's CSEC agency during the G8 and G20 summits in Toronto in 2010

Denmark

The Politiets Efterretningstjeneste (PET) of Denmark, a domestic intelligence agency, exchanges data with the NSA on a regular basis, as part of a secret agreement with the United States. Being one of the "9-Eyes" of the UKUSA Agreement, Denmark's relationship with the NSA is closer than the NSA's relationship with Germany, Sweden, Spain, Belgium or Italy.

France

The Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) of France maintains a close relationship with both the NSA and the GCHQ after discussions for increased cooperation began in November 2006. By the early 2010s, the extent of cooperation in the joint interception of digital data by the DGSE and the NSA was noted to have increased dramatically.

In 2011, a formal memorandum for data exchange was signed by the DGSE and the NSA, which facilitated the transfer of millions of metadata records from the DGSE to the NSA. From December 2012 to 8 January 2013, over 70 million metadata records were handed over to the NSA by French intelligence agencies.

Germany

The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) of Germany systematically transfers metadata from German intelligence sources to the NSA. In December 2012 alone, the BND provided the NSA with 500 million metadata records. The NSA granted the Bundesnachrichtendienst access to X-Keyscore, in exchange for the German surveillance programs Mira4 and Veras.

In early 2013, Hans-Georg Maaßen, President of the German domestic security agency Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), made several visits to the headquarters of the NSA. According to classified documents of the German government, Maaßen agreed to transfer all data records of persons monitored in Germany by the BfV via XKeyscore to the NSA. In addition, the BfV works very closely with eight other U.S. government agencies, including the CIA. Under Project 6, which is jointly operated by the CIA, BfV, and BND, a massive database containing personal information such as photos, license plate numbers, Internet search histories and telephone metadata was developed to gain a better understanding of the social relationships of presumed jihadists.

In 2012, the BfV handed over 864 data sets of personal information to the CIA, NSA and seven other U.S. intelligence agencies. In exchange, the BND received data from U.S. intelligence agencies on 1,830 occasions. The newly acquired data was handed over to the BfV and stored in a domestically accessible system known as NADIS WN.

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  The Dagger Complex in Darmstadt, Germany, is operated by the United States Army on behalf of the NSA. Similar to the NSA's Utah Data Center, the Dagger Complex is able to process, store, and decrypt millions of data pieces.

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  The Bad Aibling Station in Bavaria, Germany, was operated by the NSA until the early 2000s. It is currently run by the BND. As part of the global surveillance network ECHELON, it is the largest listening post outside Britain and the USA.

• 

  In 2013, the German news magazine Der Spiegel published an excerpt of an NSA document leaked by Snowden, showing that the BND used the NSA's XKEYSCORE to wiretap a German domestic target.

Israel

On 11 September 2013, The Guardian released a secret NSA document leaked by Snowden, which reveals how Israel's Unit 8200 (ISNU) was given raw, unfiltered data of U.S. citizens, as part of a secret agreement with the U.S. National Security Agency.

The Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU) routinely receives raw, unfiltered data of U.S. citizens from the NSA. However, a secret NSA document leaked by Snowden revealed that U.S. government officials are explicitly exempted from such forms of data sharing with the ISNU. As stated in a memorandum detailing the rules of data sharing on U.S. citizens, the ISNU is obligated to:

Destroy upon recognition any communication contained in raw SIGINT provided by NSA that is either to or from an official of the U.S. government. "U.S. government officials" include officials of the Executive Branch (including White House, Cabinet Departments, and independent agencies); the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate (members and staff); and the U.S. Federal Court system (including, but not limited to, the Supreme Court).

— Memorandum of understanding between the NSA and Israel (circa 2009)

According to the undated memorandum, the ground rules for intelligence sharing between the NSA and the ISNU were laid out in March 2009. Under the data sharing agreement, the ISNU is allowed to retain the identities of U.S. citizens (excluding U.S. government officials) for up to a year.

Japan

In 2011, the NSA asked the Japanese government to intercept underwater fibre-optic cables carrying phone and Internet data in the Asia-Pacific region. However, the Japanese government refused to comply.

Libya

Under the reign of Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan regime forged a partnership with Britain's secret service MI6 and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to obtain information about Libyan dissidents living in the United States and Canada. In exchange, Gaddafi allowed the Western democracies to use Libya as a base for extraordinary renditions.

Netherlands

The Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD) of the Netherlands has been receiving and storing data of Internet users gathered by U.S. intelligence sources such as the NSA's PRISM surveillance program. During a meeting in February 2013, the AIVD and the MIVD briefed the NSA on their attempts to hack Internet forums and to collect the data of all users using a technology known as Computer Network Exploitation (CNE).

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  Summary of a meeting held in February 2013 between the NSA and the Dutch intelligence services AIVD and MIVD

Norway

The Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS) has confirmed that data collected by the agency is "shared with the Americans". Kjell Grandhagen, head of Norwegian military intelligence told reporters at a news conference that "We share this information with partners, and partners share with us ... We are talking about huge amounts of traffic data".

In cooperation with the NSA, the NIS has gained access to Russian targets in the Kola Peninsula and other civilian targets. In general, the NIS provides information to the NSA about "Politicians", "Energy" and "Armament". A top secret memo of the NSA lists the following years as milestones of the Norway-United States of America SIGNT agreement, or NORUS Agreement:

• 1952 - Informal starting year of cooperation between the NIS and the NSA
• 1954 - Formalization of the NORUS Agreement
• 1963 - Extension of the agreement for coverage of foreign instrumentation signals intelligence (FISINT)
• 1970 - Extension of the agreement for coverage of electronic intelligence (ELINT)
• 1994 - Extension of the agreement for coverage of communications intelligence (COMINT)

The NSA perceives the NIS as one of its most reliable partners. Both agencies also cooperate to crack the encryption systems of mutual targets. According to the NSA, Norway has made no objections to its requests.

Singapore

The Defence Ministry of Singapore and its Security and Intelligence Division (SID) have been secretly intercepting much of the fibre optic cable traffic passing through the Asian continent. In close cooperation with the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD/DSD), Singapore's SID has been able to intercept SEA-ME-WE 3 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 3) as well as SEA-ME-WE 4 telecommunications cables. Access to these international telecommunications channels is facilitated by Singapore's government-owned operator, SingTel. Temasek Holdings, a multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund with a majority stake in SingTel, has maintained close relations with the country's intelligence agencies.

Information gathered by the Government of Singapore is transferred to the Government of Australia as part of an intelligence sharing agreement. This allows the "Five Eyes" to maintain a "stranglehold on communications across the Eastern Hemisphere".

Spain

In close cooperation with the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI), the NSA intercepted 60.5 million phone calls in Spain in a single month.

Sweden

The Försvarets radioanstalt (FRA) of Sweden (codenamed Sardines)^[127] has allowed the "Five Eyes" to access underwater cables in the Baltic Sea. On 5 December 2013, Sveriges Television (Swedish Television) revealed that the FRA has been conducting a clandestine surveillance operation targeting the internal politics of Russia. The operation was conducted on behalf of the NSA, which receives data handed over to it by the FRA.

According to documents leaked by Snowden, the FRA of Sweden has been granted access to the NSA's international surveillance program XKeyscore.

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  The NSA's relationship with Sweden's FRA under the UKUSA Agreement

Switzerland

The Federal Intelligence Service (NDB) of Switzerland exchanges information with the NSA regularly, on the basis of a secret agreement to circumvent domestic surveillance restrictions. In addition, the NSA has been granted access to Swiss surveillance facilities in Leuk (canton of Valais) and Herrenschwanden (canton of Bern), which are part of the Swiss surveillance program Onyx.

According to the NDB, the agency maintains working relationships with about 100 international organizations. However, the NDB has denied any form of cooperation with the NSA. Although the NSA does not have direct access to Switzerland's Onyx surveillance program, the Director of the NDB acknowledged that it is possible for other U.S. intelligence agencies to gain access to Switzerland's surveillance system.

United Kingdom

See also: Mass surveillance in the United Kingdom

The British government allowed the NSA to store personal data of British citizens.

Under Project MINARET, anti-Vietnam War dissidents in the United States were jointly targeted by the GCHQ and the NSA.

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  RAF Menwith Hill, near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, is the biggest listening post outside the United States. It was used by U.S. military personnel to spy on Britons on behalf of MI5 and MI6.

United States

National Security Agency surveillance
Map of global NSA data collection, with countries subject to the most data collection shown in red

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

The CIA pays AT&T more than US$10 million a year to gain access to international phone records, including those of U.S. citizens.

National Security Agency (NSA)

The NSA's Foreign Affairs Directorate interacts with foreign intelligence services and members of the Five Eyes to implement global surveillance.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

The FBI acts as the liaison between U.S. intelligence agencies and Silicon Valley giants such as Microsoft.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

In the early 2010s, the DHS conducted a joint surveillance operation with the FBI to crack down on dissidents of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement.

Other law enforcement agencies

The NSA supplies domestic intercepts to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and other law enforcement agencies, who use intercepted data to initiate criminal investigations against US citizens. Federal agents are instructed to "recreate" the investigative trail in order to "cover up" where the information originated.

White House

Play media

U.S. President Barack Obama emphasizing the importance of global surveillance to prevent terrorist attacks

Weeks after the September 11 attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act to ensure no disruption in the government's ability to conduct global surveillance:

This new law that I sign today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists, including e-mails, the Internet and cell phones.

— U.S. President George W. Bush on the implementation of the Patriot Act after the September 11 attacks

The Patriot Act was extended by U.S. President Barack Obama in May 2011 to further extend the federal government's legal authority to conduct additional forms of surveillance such as roving wiretaps.

Commercial cooperation

Over 70 percent of the United States Intelligence Community's budget is earmarked for payment to private firms. According to Forbes magazine, the defense technology company Lockheed Martin is currently the US's biggest defense contractor, and it is destined to be the NSA's most powerful commercial partner and biggest contractor in terms of dollar revenue.

AT&T

In a joint operation with the NSA, the American telecommunications corporation AT&T operates Room 641A in the SBC Communications building in San Francisco to spy on Internet traffic. The CIA pays AT&T more than US$10 million a year to gain access to international phone records, including those of U.S. citizens.

Booz Allen Hamilton

Projects developed by Booz Allen Hamilton include the Strategic Innovation Group to identify terrorists through social media, on behalf of government agencies. During the fiscal year of 2013, Booz Allen Hamilton derived 99% of its income from the government, with the largest portion of its revenue coming from the U.S. Army. In 2013, Booz Allen Hamilton was hailed by Bloomberg Businessweek as "the World's Most Profitable Spy Organization".

British Telecommunications

British Telecommunications (code-named Remedy), a major supplier of telecommunications, granted Britain's intelligence agency GCHQ "unlimited access" to its network of undersea cables, according to documents leaked by Snowden.

Microsoft

The American multinational corporation Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent software encryption safeguards. It also allowed the federal government to monitor web chats on the Outlook.com portal. In 2013, Microsoft worked with the FBI to allow the NSA to gain access to the company's cloud storage service SkyDrive.

Orange S.A.

French telecommunications corporation Orange S.A. shares customer call data with intelligence agencies.

The French telecommunications corporation Orange S.A. shares customer call data with the French intelligence agency DGSE, and the intercepted data is handed over to GCHQ.

RSA Security

RSA Security was paid US$10 million by the NSA to introduce a cryptographic backdoor in its encryption products.

Stratfor

Strategic Forecasting, Inc., more commonly known as Stratfor, is a global intelligence company offering information to governments and private clients including Dow Chemical Company, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, and the U.S. Marine Corps.

Vodafone

The British telecommunications company Vodafone (code-named Gerontic) granted Britain's intelligence agency GCHQ "unlimited access" to its network of undersea cables, according to documents leaked by Snowden.

In-Q-Tel

In-Q-Tel, which receives more than US$56 million a year in government support, is a venture capital firm that enables the CIA to invest in Silicon Valley.

Palantir Technologies

Palantir Technologies is a data mining corporation with close ties to the FBI, NSA and CIA.

Based in Palo Alto, California, the company developed a data collection and analytical program known as Prism.

In 2011, it was revealed that the company conducted surveillance on Glenn Greenwald.

Surveillance evasion

Several countries have evaded global surveillance by constructing secret bunker facilities deep below the Earth's surface.

North Korea

Despite North Korea being a priority target, the NSA's internal documents acknowledged that it did not know much about Kim Jong-un and his regime's intentions.

Iran

In October 2012, Iran's police chief Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam alleged that Google is not a search engine but "a spying tool" for Western intelligence agencies. Six months later in April 2013, the country announced plans to introduce an "Islamic Google Earth" to evade global surveillance.

Libya

Libya evaded surveillance by building "hardened and buried" bunkers at least 40 feet below ground level.

Impact

Main article: Aftermath of the global surveillance disclosures

"Stop Watching Us" rally in Berlin, Germany, August 2014

The global surveillance disclosure 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. On 12 August 2013, President Obama announced the creation of an "independent" panel of "outside experts" to review the NSA's surveillance programs. The panel is due to be established by the Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, who will consult and provide assistance to them.

According to a survey undertaken by the human rights group PEN International, these disclosures have had a chilling effect on American writers. Fearing the risk of being targeted by government surveillance, 28% of PEN's American members have curbed their usage of social media, and 16% have self-censored themselves by avoiding controversial topics in their writings.