Cyberstalking is often accompanied by realtime or offline stalking. In many jurisdictions, such as California, both are criminal offenses. Both are motivated by a desire to control, intimidate or influence a victim.
A stalker may be an online stranger or a person whom the target knows.
They may be anonymous and solicit involvement of other people online who
do not even know the target.
Cyberstalking is a criminal offense under various state anti-stalking, slander and harassment laws. A conviction can result in a restraining order, probation, or criminal penalties against the assailant, including jail.
There have been a number of attempts by experts and legislators to
define cyberstalking. It is generally understood to be the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk or harass an individual, a group, or an organization. Cyberstalking is a form of cyberbullying; the terms are often used interchangeably in the media. Both may include false accusations, defamation, slander and libel.
Cyberstalking may also include monitoring, identity theft,
threats, vandalism, solicitation for sex, or gathering information that
may be used to threaten or harass. Cyberstalking is often accompanied
by real-time or offline stalking. Both forms of stalking may be criminal offenses.
Stalking is a continuous process, consisting of a series of
actions, each of which may be entirely legal in itself. Technology
ethics professor Lambèr Royakkers defines cyberstalking as perpetrated
by someone without a current relationship with the victim. About the
abusive effects of cyberstalking, he writes that:
[Stalking] is a form of mental assault, in which the
perpetrator repeatedly, unwantedly, and disruptively breaks into the
life-world of the victim, with whom he has no relationship (or no longer
has), with motives that are directly or indirectly traceable to the
affective sphere. Moreover, the separated acts that make up the
intrusion cannot by themselves cause the mental abuse, but do taken
together (cumulative effect).
Distinguishing cyberstalking from other acts
There is a distinction between cyber-trolling
and cyber-stalking. Research has shown that actions that can be
perceived to be harmless as a one-off can be considered to be trolling,
whereas if it is part of a persistent campaign then it can be considered
stalking.
TM
Motive
Mode
Gravity
Description
1
Playtime
Cyber-bantering
Cyber-trolling
In the moment and quickly regret
2
Tactical
Cyber-trickery
Cyber-trolling
In the moment but do not regret and continue
3
Strategic
Cyber-bullying
Cyber-stalking
Go out of way to cause problems, but without a sustained and planned long-term campaign
4
Domination
Cyber-hickery
Cyber-stalking
Goes out of the way to create rich media to target one or more specific individuals
Cyberstalking author Alexis Moore separates cyberstalking from identity theft, which is financially motivated. Her definition, which was also used by the Republic of the Philippines in their legal description, is as follows:
Cyberstalking is a
technologically-based "attack" on one person who has been targeted
specifically for that attack for reasons of anger, revenge or control.
Cyberstalking can take many forms, including:
harassment, embarrassment and humiliation of the victim
emptying bank accounts or other economic control such as ruining the victim's credit score
harassing family, friends and employers to isolate the victim
scare tactics to instill fear and more
Identification and detection
CyberAngels has written about how to identify cyberstalking:
When identifying cyberstalking "in the field," and
particularly when considering whether to report it to any kind of legal
authority, the following features or combination of features can be
considered to characterize a true stalking situation: malice, premeditation, repetition, distress, obsession, vendetta, no legitimate purpose, personally directed, disregarded warnings to stop, harassment and threats.
A number of key factors have been identified in cyberstalking:
False accusations:
Many cyberstalkers try to damage the reputation of their victim and
turn other people against them. They post false information about them
on websites. They may set up their own websites, blogs or user pages for
this purpose. They post allegations about the victim to newsgroups,
chat rooms, or other sites that allow public contributions such as
Wikipedia or Amazon.com.
Attempts to gather information about the victim: Cyberstalkers may
approach their victim's friends, family and work colleagues to obtain
personal information. They may advertise for information on the
Internet, or hire a private detective.
Monitoring their target's online activities and attempting to trace their IP address in an effort to gather more information about their victims.
Encouraging others to harass the victim: Many cyberstalkers try to
involve third parties in the harassment. They may claim the victim has
harmed the stalker or his/her family in some way, or may post the
victim's name and telephone number in order to encourage others to join
the pursuit.
False victimization:
The cyberstalker will claim that the victim is harassing him or her.
Bocij writes that this phenomenon has been noted in a number of
well-known cases.
Attacks on data and equipment: They may try to damage the victim's computer by sending viruses.
Ordering goods and services: They order items or subscribe to
magazines in the victim's name. These often involve subscriptions to pornography or ordering sex toys then having them delivered to the victim's workplace.
Arranging to meet: Young people face a particularly high risk of having cyberstalkers try to set up meetings between them.
The posting of defamatory or derogatory statements: Using web pages
and message boards to incite some response or reaction from their
victim.
Prevalence and impact
According to Law Enforcement Technology, cyberstalking has
increased with the growth of new technology and new ways to stalk
victims. "Disgruntled employees pose as their bosses to post explicit
messages on social network sites; spouses use GPS to track their mates'
every move. Even police and prosecutors find themselves at risk, as gang
members and other organized criminals find out where they live — often
to intimidate them into dropping a case."
In January 2009, the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the United States released the study "Stalking Victimization in the United States," which was sponsored by the Office on Violence Against Women. The report, based on supplemental data from the National Crime Victimization Survey,
showed that one in four stalking victims had been cyberstalked as well,
with the perpetrators using internet-based services such as email,
instant messaging, GPS, or spyware. The final report stated that
approximately 1.2 million victims had stalkers who used technology to
find them. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), in Washington D.C.
has released statistics that there are 3.4 million stalking victims
each year in the United States. Of those, one in four reported
experiencing cyberstalking.
According to Robin M. Kowalski, a social psychologist at Clemson University,
cyberbullying has been shown to cause higher levels of anxiety and
depression for victims than normal bullying. Kowalksi states that much
of this stems from the anonymity of the perpetrators, which is a common
feature of cyberstalking as well. According to a study by Kowalksi, of
3,700 bullied middle-school students, a quarter had been subjected to a
form of online harassment.
Types
Stalking by strangers
According to Joey Rushing, a District Attorney of Franklin County, Alabama,
there is no single definition of a cyberstalker - they can be either
strangers to the victim or have a former/present relationship.
"[Cyberstalkers] come in all shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds. They
patrol Web sites looking for an opportunity to take advantage of
people."
Gender-based stalking
Harassment and stalking because of gender online, also known as online gender-based violence, is common, and can include rape threats and other threats of violence, as well as the posting of the victim's personal information.
It is blamed for limiting victims' activities online or driving them
offline entirely, thereby impeding their participation in online life
and undermining their autonomy, dignity, identity, and opportunities.
Of intimate partners
Cyberstalking of intimate partners is the online harassment of a current or former romantic partner. It is a form of domestic violence,
and experts say its purpose is to control the victim in order to
encourage social isolation and create dependency. Harassers may send
repeated insulting or threatening e-mails to their victims, monitor or
disrupt their victims' e-mail use, and use the victim's account to send
e-mails to others posing as the victim or to purchase goods or services
the victim does not want. They may also use the Internet to research and
compile personal information about the victim, to use in order to
harass him or her.
Of celebrities and public persons
Profiling of stalkers shows that almost always they stalk someone they know or, via delusion, think they know, as is the case with stalkers of celebrities or public persons in which the stalkers feel they know the celebrity even though the celebrity does not know them.
As part of the risk they take for being in the public eye, celebrities
and public figures are often targets of lies or made-up stories in
tabloids as well as by stalkers, some even seeming to be fans.
In one noted case in 2011, actress Patricia Arquette quit Facebook
after alleged cyberstalking. In her last post, Arquette explained that
her security warned her Facebook friends to never accept friend requests
from people they do not actually know. Arquette stressed that just
because people seemed to be fans did not mean they were safe. The media
issued a statement that Arquette planned to communicate with fans
exclusively through her Twitter account in the future.
Web 2.0
technologies have enabled online groups of anonymous people to
self-organize to target individuals with online defamation, threats of
violence and technology-based attacks. These include publishing lies and
doctored photographs, threats of rape and other violence, posting
sensitive personal information about victims, e-mailing damaging
statements about victims to their employers, and manipulating search
engines to make damaging material about the victim more prominent. Victims frequently respond by adopting pseudonyms or going offline entirely.
Experts attribute the destructive nature of anonymous online mobs to group dynamics,
saying that groups with homogeneous views tend to become more extreme.
As members reinforce each others' beliefs, they fail to see themselves
as individuals and lose a sense of personal responsibility for their
destructive acts. In doing so they dehumanize their victims, becoming
more aggressive when they believe they are supported by authority
figures. Internet service providers and website owners are sometimes
blamed for not speaking out against this type of harassment.
A notable example of online mob harassment was the experience of American software developer and blogger Kathy Sierra.
In 2007 a group of anonymous individuals attacked Sierra, threatening
her with rape and strangulation, publishing her home address and Social Security
number, and posting doctored photographs of her. Frightened, Sierra
cancelled her speaking engagements and shut down her blog, writing "I
will never feel the same. I will never be the same."
Corporate cyberstalking
Corporate cyberstalking is when a company harasses an individual
online, or an individual or group of individuals harasses an
organization. Motives for corporate cyberstalking are ideological, or include a desire for financial gain or revenge.
Perpetrators
Motives and profile
Mental profiling of digital criminals has identified psychological and social factors that motivate stalkers as: envy;
pathological obsession (professional or sexual); unemployment or
failure with own job or life; intention to intimidate and cause others
to feel inferior; the stalker is delusional
and believes they "know" the target; the stalker wants to instill fear
in a person to justify his/her status; belief they can get away with it
(anonymity); intimidation for financial advantage or business
competition; revenge over perceived or imagined rejection.
Four types of cyberstalkers
Preliminary work by Leroy McFarlane and Paul Bocij has identified
four types of cyberstalkers: the vindictive cyberstalkers noted for the
ferocity of their attacks; the composed cyberstalker whose motive is to
annoy; the intimate cyberstalker who attempts to form a relationship
with the victim but turns on them if rebuffed; and collective
cyberstalkers, groups with a motive. According to Antonio Chacón Medina, author of Una nueva cara de Internet, El acoso
("A new face of the Internet: stalking"), the general profile of the
harasser is cold, with little or no respect for others. The stalker is a
predator who can wait patiently until vulnerable victims appear, such
as women or children, or may enjoy pursuing a particular person, whether
personally familiar to them or unknown. The harasser enjoys and
demonstrates their power to pursue and psychologically damage the
victim.
Behaviors
Cyberstalkers find their victims by using search engines, online forums, bulletin and discussion boards, chat rooms, and more recently, through social networking sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, Twitter, and Indymedia, a media outlet known for self-publishing. They may engage in live chat harassment or flaming or they may send electronic viruses and unsolicited e-mails.
Cyberstalkers may research individuals to feed their obsessions and
curiosity. Conversely, the acts of cyberstalkers may become more
intense, such as repeatedly instant messaging their targets.
More commonly they will post defamatory or derogatory statements about
their stalking target on web pages, message boards, and in guest books
designed to get a reaction or response from their victim, thereby
initiating contact. In some cases, they have been known to create fake blogs in the name of the victim containing defamatory or pornographic content.
When prosecuted, many stalkers have unsuccessfully attempted to
justify their behavior based on their use of public forums, as opposed
to direct contact. Once they get a reaction from the victim, they will
typically attempt to track or follow the victim's internet activity.
Classic cyberstalking behavior includes the tracing of the victim's IP address in an attempt to verify their home or place of employment.
Some cyberstalking situations do evolve into physical stalking, and a
victim may experience abusive and excessive phone calls, vandalism,
threatening or obscene mail, trespassing, and physical assault. Moreover, many physical stalkers will use cyberstalking as another method of harassing their victims.
A 2007 study led by Paige Padgett from the University of Texas Health Science Center found that there was a false degree of safety assumed by women looking for love online.
Legislation on cyberstalking varies from country to country.
Cyberstalking and cyberbullying are relatively new phenomena, but that
does not mean that crimes committed through the network are not
punishable under legislation drafted for that purpose. Although there
are often existing laws that prohibit stalking or harassment in a
general sense, legislators sometimes believe that such laws are
inadequate or do not go far enough, and thus bring forward new
legislation to address this perceived shortcoming. The point overlooked
is that enforcing these laws can be a challenge in these virtual
communities. The reason being, these issues are very unique to law
enforcement agencies who have never faced cases related to
cyberstalking. In the United States, for example, nearly every state has laws that address cyberstalking, cyberbullying, or both.
In countries such as the US, in practice, there is little
legislative difference between the concepts of "cyberbullying" and
"cyberstalking." The primary distinction is one of age; if adults are
involved, the act is usually termed cyberstalking, while among children it is usually referred to as cyberbullying. However, as there have not been any formal definitions of the terms, this distinction is one of semantics and many laws treat bullying and stalking as much the same issue.
Australia
In Australia,
the Stalking Amendment Act (1999) includes the use of any form of
technology to harass a target as forms of "criminal stalking."
Canada
In 2012, there was a high-profile investigation into the death of Amanda Todd, a young Canadian student who had been blackmailed and stalked online before committing suicide. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were criticized in the media for not naming one of her alleged stalkers as a person of interest.
Philippines
In the Fifteenth Congress of the Republic of the Philippines, a cyberstalking bill was introduced by Senator Manny Villar.
The result was to "urge the Senate Committees on Science and
Technology, and Public Information and Mass Media to conduct an inquiry,
in aid of legislation, on the increasing occurrence of cyber stalking
cases and the modus operandi adopted in the internet to perpetuate
crimes with the end in view of formulating legislation and policy
measures geared towards curbing cyber stalking and other cyber crimes
and protect online users in the country."
A conviction can result in a restraining order, probation, or criminal penalties against the assailant, including jail. Cyberstalking specifically has been addressed in recent U.S. federal law. For example, the Violence Against Women Act, passed in 2000, made cyberstalking a part of the federal interstate stalking statute. The current US Federal Anti-Cyber-Stalking law is found at 47 U.S.C.§ 223.
Still, there remains a lack of federal legislation to
specifically address cyberstalking, leaving the majority of legislative
at the state level. A few states have both stalking and harassment statutes that criminalize threatening and unwanted electronic communications.
The first anti-stalking law was enacted in California in 1990, and
while all fifty states soon passed anti-stalking laws, by 2009 only 14
of them had laws specifically addressing "high-tech stalking." The first U.S. cyberstalking law went into effect in 1999 in California.
Other states have laws other than harassment or anti-stalking statutes
that prohibit misuse of computer communications and e-mail, while others
have passed laws containing broad language that can be interpreted to
include cyberstalking behaviors, such as in their harassment or stalking
legislation.
Sentences can range from 18 months in prison and a $10,000 fine
for a fourth-degree charge to ten years in prison and a $150,000 fine
for a second-degree charge.
Alaska, Florida, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and California, have incorporated electronically communicated statements as conduct constituting stalking in their anti-stalking laws.
Texas enacted the Stalking by Electronic Communications Act, 2001.
Missouri
revised its state harassment statutes to include stalking and
harassment by telephone and electronic communications (as well as cyber-bullying) after the Megan Meier suicide case of 2006.
In one of the few cases where a cyberstalking conviction was obtained
the cyberstalker was a woman, which is also much rarer that male
cyberstalkers. The conviction was overturned in on appeal in 2009 however.
In Florida, HB 479 was introduced in 2003 to ban cyberstalking. This was signed into law on October 2003.
Age, legal limitations
While some laws only address online harassment of children, there are
laws that protect adult cyberstalking victims. While some sites
specialize in laws that protect victims age 18 and under, current and
pending cyberstalking-related United States federal and state laws offer
help to victims of all ages.
Most stalking laws require that the perpetrator make a credible
threat of violence against the victim; others include threats against
the victim's immediate family; and still others require the alleged
stalker's course of conduct constitute an implied threat. While some
conduct involving annoying or menacing behavior might fall short of
illegal stalking, such behavior may be a prelude to stalking and
violence and should be treated seriously.
Online identity stealth blurs the line on infringement of the
rights of would-be victims to identify their perpetrators. There is a
debate on how internet use can be traced without infringing on protected
civil liberties.
Specific cases
There have been a number of high-profile legal cases in the United
States related to cyberstalking, many of which have involved the
suicides of young students.
In thousands of other cases, charges either were not brought for the
cyber harassment or were unsuccessful in obtaining convictions.
As in all legal instances, much depends on public sympathy towards the
victim, the quality of legal representation and other factors that can
greatly influence the outcome of the crime – even if it will be
considered a crime.
In the case of a fourteen-year-old student in Michigan, for
instance, she pressed charges against her alleged rapist, which resulted
in her being cyberstalked and cyberbullied by fellow students. After
her suicide in 2010 all charges were dropped against the man who
allegedly raped her, on the basis that the only witness was dead. This
is the despite the fact that statutory rape charges could have been
pressed.
In another case of cyberstalking, college student Dharun Ravi secretly filmed his roommate's sexual liaison with another man, then posted it online. After the victim committed suicide, Ravi was convicted in of bias intimidation and invasion of privacy in New Jersey v. Dharun Ravi.
In 2012 he was sentenced to 30 days in jail, more than $11,000 in
restitution and three years of probation. The judge ruled that he
believes Ravi acted out of "colossal insensitivity, not hatred."
Europe
Poland – Stalking, including cyberstalking, was made a criminal offence under the Polish Criminal Code on 6 June 2011.
A false accusation is a claim or allegation of wrongdoing that is untrue and/or otherwise unsupported by facts. False accusations are also known as groundless accusations or unfounded accusations or false allegations or false claims. They can occur in any of the following contexts:
When
there is insufficient supporting evidence to determine whether it is
true or false, an accusation is described as "unsubstantiated" or
"unfounded". Accusations that are determined to be false based on
corroborating evidence can be divided into three categories:
A completely false allegation, in that the alleged events did not occur.
An allegation that describes events that did occur, but were
perpetrated by an individual who is not accused, and in which the
accused person is innocent.
An allegation that is false, in that it mixes descriptions of events
that actually happened with other events that did not occur.
A false allegation can occur as the result of intentional lying on the part of the accuser; or unintentionally, due to a confabulation, either arising spontaneously due to mental illness or resulting from deliberate or accidental suggestive questioning, or faulty interviewing techniques.
In 1997, researchers Poole and Lindsay suggested that separate labels
should be applied to the two concepts, proposing that the term "false
allegations" be used specifically when the accuser is aware that they
are lying, and "false suspicions" for the wider range of false
accusations in which suggestive questioning may have been involved.
When a person is suspected of a wrongdoing for which they are in
fact responsible, "false accusation may be used to divert attention from
one's own guilt".
False accusation may also arise in part from the conduct of the
accused, particularly where the accused engages in behaviors consistent
with having committed the suspected wrongdoing, either unconsciously or
for purposes of appearing guilty.
Additionally, once a false accusation has been made –
particularly an emotionally laden one – normal human emotional responses
to being falsely accused (such as fear, anger, or denial of the
accusation) may be misinterpreted as evidence of guilt.
Statistics
In Japan in 2020, 33 people (21 males and 12 females) were arrested for false accusation.
A false accusation of rape
is the intentional reporting of a rape where no rape has occurred. It
is difficult to assess the prevalence of false accusations because they
are often conflated with non-prosecuted cases under the designation
"unfounded". However, in the United States, the FBIUniform Crime Report in 1996 and the United States Department of Justice in 1997 stated 8% of rape accusations in the United States were regarded as unfounded or false. Studies in other countries have reported their own rates at anywhere from 1.5% (Denmark) to 10% (Canada). Due to varying definitions of a "false accusation", the true percentage remains unknown.
A false allegation of child sexual abuse is an accusation that a person committed one or more acts of child sexual abuse
when in reality there was no perpetration of abuse by the accused
person as alleged. Such accusations can be brought by the victim, or by
another person on the alleged victim's behalf. Studies of child abuse
allegations suggest that the overall rate of false accusation is under
10%, as approximated based on multiple studies.Of the allegations determined to be false, only a small portion
originated with the child, the studies showed; most false allegations
originated with an adult bringing the accusations on behalf of a child,
and of those, a large majority occurred in the context of divorce and child-custody battles.
According to a 2003 survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute, the
most common bullying tactics included false attribution of "errors" to
an employee, glaring or other hostile body language, dismissive
comments, the "silent treatment", and/or making up arbitrary "rules" to
ensure that a victim breaks them.
The case has been made that diagnoses of Münchausen syndrome by
proxy, that is harming someone else in order to gain attention for
oneself, are often false or highly questionable.
In 1999, Pathe, Mullen, and Purcell wrote that popular interest in stalking was promoting false claims.
In 2004, Sheridan and Blaauw said that they estimated that 11.5% of
claims in a sample of 357 reported claims of stalking were false.
Murder
In the mid
2000, LAPD arrested a young man Juan Catalan after a little girl was
shot dead. Catalan was sentenced to death after a witness stated that he
looked like the killer. Catalan turned out to be innocent; it was a
television show (Curb Your Enthusiasm) which showed him seated at a baseball game, thus exonerating him. A documentary was later produced about the event.
Diagram showing the operation of a StingRay device for cellphone surveillance.
Cellphone surveillance (also known as cellphone spying) may involve tracking, bugging, monitoring, eavesdropping, and recording conversations and text messages on mobile phones. It also encompasses the monitoring of people's movements, which can be tracked using mobile phone signals when phones are turned on.
Mass cellphone surveillance
Stingray devices
StingRay devices
are a technology that mimics a cellphone tower, causing nearby
cellphones to connect and pass data through them instead of legitimate
towers. This process is invisible to the end-user and allows the device operator full access to any communicated data. This technology is a form of man-in-the-middle attack.
StingRays are used by law enforcement agencies to track people's
movements, and intercept and record conversations, names, phone numbers
and text messages from mobile phones. Their use entails the monitoring and collection of data from all mobile phones within a target area. Law enforcement agencies in Northern California that have purchased StingRay devices include the Oakland Police Department, San Francisco Police Department, Sacramento County Sheriff's Department, San Jose Police Department and Fremont Police Department.
The Fremont Police Department's use of a StingRay device is in a
partnership with the Oakland Police Department and Alameda County
District Attorney's Office.
A tower dump is the sharing of identifying information by a cell tower operator, which can be used to identify where a given individual was at a certain time.
As mobile phone users move, their devices will connect to nearby cell
towers in order to maintain a strong signal even while the phone is not
actively in use. These towers record identifying information about cellphones connected to them which then can be used to track individuals.
In most of the United States, police can get many kinds of
cellphone data without obtaining a warrant. Law-enforcement records show
police can use initial data from a tower dump to ask for another court
order for more information, including addresses, billing records and
logs of calls, texts and locations.
Targeted surveillance
Software vulnerabilities
Cellphone
bugs can be created by disabling the ringing feature on a mobile phone,
allowing a caller to call a phone to access its microphone and
listening. One example of this was the group FaceTime bug. This bug enables people to eavesdrop on conversations without calls being answered by the recipient.
In the United States, the FBI has used "roving bugs", which entails the activation of microphones on mobile phones to the monitoring of conversations.
Cellphone spying software
Cellphone spying software
is a type of cellphone bugging, tracking, and monitoring software that
is surreptitiously installed on mobile phones. This software can enable
conversations to be heard and recorded from phones upon which it is
installed. Cellphone spying software can be downloaded onto cellphones. Cellphone spying software enables the monitoring or stalking of a target cellphone from a remote location with some of the following techniques:
Allowing remote observation of the target cellphone position in real-time on a map
Remotely enabling microphones
to capture and forward conversations. Microphones can be activated
during a call or when the phone is on standby for capturing
conversations near the cellphone.
Receiving remote alerts and/or text messages each time somebody dials a number on the cellphone
Remotely reading text messages and call logs
Cellphone spying software can enable microphones on mobile phones
when phones are not being used, and can be installed by mobile
providers.
Bugging
Intentionally hiding a cell phone in a location is a bugging technique. Some hidden cellphone bugs rely on Wi-Fihotspots, rather than cellular data, where the tracker rootkit software periodically "wakes up" and signs into a public Wi-Fi hotspot to upload tracker data onto a public internet server.
Lawful interception
Governments may sometimes legally monitor mobile phone communications - a procedure known as lawful interception.
In the United States, the government pays phone companies
directly to record and collect cellular communications from specified
individuals. U.S. law enforcement agencies can also legally track the movements of people from their mobile phone signals upon obtaining a court order to do so.
These invasive legal surveillance can cause a change in public
behaviors directing our ways of communication away from technology based
devices.
Real-time location data
In 2018, United States cellphone carriers that sell customers' real-time location data - AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint- publicly stated they would cease those data sales because the FCC
found the companies had been negligent in protecting the personal
privacy of their customers' data. Location aggregators, bounty hunters,
and others including law enforcement agencies that did not obtain search
warrants used that information. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai
concluded that carriers had apparently violated federal law. However,
in 2019, the carriers were continuing to sell real-time location data.
In late February 2020, the FCC was seeking fines on the carriers in the
case.
Occurrences
In 2005, the prime minister of Greece was advised that his, over 100 dignitaries', and the mayor of Athens' mobile phones were bugged. Kostas Tsalikidis,
a Vodafone-Panafon employee, was implicated in the matter as using his
position as head of the company's network planning to assist in the
bugging.
Tsalikidis was found hanged in his apartment the day before the leaders
were notified about the bugging, which was reported as "an apparent
suicide."
Security holes within Signalling System No. 7
(SS7), called Common Channel Signalling System 7 (CCSS7) in the US and
Common Channel Interoffice Signaling 7 (CCIS7) in the UK, were
demonstrated at Chaos Communication Congress, Hamburg in 2014.
During the coronavirus pandemic Israel authorized its internal security service, Shin Bet, to use its access to historic cellphone metadata to engage in location tracking of COVID-19 carriers.
Detection
Some
indications of possible cellphone surveillance occurring may include a
mobile phone waking up unexpectedly, using a lot of battery power when
on idle or when not in use, hearing clicking or beeping sounds when
conversations are occurring and the circuit board of the phone being
warm despite the phone not being used.
However, sophisticated surveillance methods can be completely invisible
to the user and may be able to evade detection techniques currently
employed by security researchers and ecosystem providers.
Prevention
Preventive
measures against cellphone surveillance include not losing or allowing
strangers to use a mobile phone and the utilization of an access
password. Another technique would be turning off the phone and then also removing the battery when not in use. Jamming or a Faraday cage
may also work, the latter obviating removal of the battery.
Another solution is a cellphone with a physical (electric) switch or
isolated electronic switch that disconnects the microphone and the
camera without bypass, meaning the switch can be operated by the user
only - no software can connect it back.
The Golden Shield Project (Chinese: 金盾工程; pinyin: jīndùn gōngchéng), also named National Public Security Work Informational Project, is the Chinese nationwide network-security fundamental constructional project by the e-government of the People's Republic of China.
This project includes a security management information system, a
criminal information system, an exit and entry administration
information system, a supervisor information system, a traffic
management information system, among others.
The Golden Shield Project is one of the 12 important "golden" projects.
The other "golden" projects are Golden Customs (also known as Golden
Gate) (for customs), Golden Tax (for taxation), Golden Macro, Golden
Finance (for financial management), Golden Auditing, Golden Security,
Golden Agriculture (for agricultural information), Golden Quality (for
quality supervision), Golden Water (for water conservancy information),
Golden Credit, and Golden Discipline projects.
The Golden Shield Project also manages the Bureau of Public Information and Network Security Supervision, which is a bureau that is widely believed, though not officially claimed, to operate a subproject called the Great Firewall of China (GFW) which is a censorship and surveillance project that blocks data from foreign countries that may be unlawful in the PRC. It is operated by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) of the government of China. This subproject was initiated in 1998 and began operations in November 2003. It has also seemingly been used to attack international web sites using Man-on-the-sideDDoS, for example GitHub on 2015/03/28.
History
The political and ideological background of the Golden Shield Project is considered to be one of Deng Xiaoping's favorite sayings in the early 1980s: "If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in." The saying is related to a period of economic reform in China that became known as the "socialist market economy". Superseding the political ideologies of the Cultural Revolution, the reform led China towards a market economy and opened up the market for foreign investors. Nonetheless, despite the economic freedom, values and political ideas of the Chinese Communist Party have had to be protected by "swatting flies" of other unwanted ideologies.
The Internet in China arrived in 1994, as the inevitable consequence of and supporting tool for the "socialist market economy".
As availability of the Internet has gradually increased, it has become a
common communication platform and tool for trading information.
The Ministry of Public Security took initial steps to control
Internet use in 1997, when it issued comprehensive regulations governing
its use. The key sections, Articles 4–6, are the following:
Individuals are prohibited from
using the Internet to: harm national security; disclose state secrets;
or injure the interests of the state or society. Users are prohibited
from using the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit
information that incites resistance to the PRC Constitution, laws, or
administrative regulations; promotes the overthrow of the government or
socialist system; undermines national unification; distorts the truth,
spreads rumors, or destroys social order; or provides sexually
suggestive material or encourages gambling, violence, or murder. Users
are prohibited from engaging in activities that harm the security of
computer information networks and from using networks or changing
network resources without prior approval.
In 1998, the Chinese Communist Party feared that the China Democracy Party (CDP) would breed a powerful new network that the party elites might not be able to control. The CDP was immediately banned, followed by arrests and imprisonment.
That same year, the Golden Shield project was started. The first part
of the project lasted eight years and was completed in 2006. The second
part began in 2006 and ended in 2008.
On 6 December 2002, 300 people in charge of the Golden Shield project
from 31 provinces and cities throughout China participated in a four-day inaugural "Comprehensive Exhibition on Chinese Information System". At the exhibition, many western high-tech products, including Internet security, video monitoring and human face recognition were purchased. It is estimated that around 30,000-50,000 police are employed in this gigantic project.
A subsystem of the Golden Shield has been nicknamed "the Great Firewall" (防火长城) (a term that first appeared in a Wired magazine article in 1997) in reference to its role as a network firewall and to the ancient Great Wall of China. This part of the project includes the ability to block content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through and consists of standard firewalls and proxy servers at the six Internetgateways. The system also selectively engages in DNS cache poisoning
when particular sites are requested. The government does not appear to
be systematically examining Internet content, as this appears to be
technically impractical.
Because of its disconnection from the larger world of IP routing
protocols, the network contained within the Great Firewall has been
described as "the Chinese autonomous routing domain".
During the 2008 Summer Olympics, Chinese officials told Internet providers to prepare to unblock access from certain Internet cafés, access jacks in hotel rooms and conference centers where foreigners were expected to work or stay.
Actions and purpose
The
Golden Shield Project contains an integrated, multi-layered system,
involving technical, administrative, public security, national security,
publicity and many other departments. This project was planning to
finish within five years, separated into two phases.
Phase I
The
first phase of the project focused on the construction of the
first-level, second-level, and the third-level information communication
network, application database, shared platform, etc. The period was
three years.
According to the Xinhua News Agency, since September 2003, the Public Security
department of China has recorded 96% of the population information of
mainland China into the database. In other words, the information of
1.25 billion out of 1.3 billion people has recorded in the information
database of the Public Security department of China.
Within three years, phase I project has finished the first-level,
second-level, and the third-level backbone network and access network.
This network has covered public security organs at all levels. The
grass-roots teams of public security organs have accessed to the
backbone network with the coverage rate 90%, that is to say, every 100
police officers have 40 computers connected to the network of the phase I
project. The Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China said that the phase I project had significantly enhanced the combat effectiveness of public security.
Members participated in the phase I project include Tsinghua University from China, and some high-tech companies from the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Israel, etc. Cisco Systems
from the United States of America has provided massive hardware devices
for this project, and therefore was criticized by some members of the United States Congress.
According to an internal Cisco document, Cisco viewed China's Great
Firewall and its Internet censorship as an opportunity to expand its
business with China.
According to China Central Television, phase I cost 6.4 billion yuan. On 6 December 2002, there came the "2002 China Large Institutions Informationization Exhibition", 300 leaders from the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China and from other public security bureaus
of 31 provinces or municipalities attended the exhibition. There were
many western high-tech products, including network security, video
surveillance and face recognition.
It was estimated that about 30000 police officers have been employed to
maintain the system. There was a multi-level system to track netizens
violating the provisions. Netizens who want to use the internet in a
cybercafé are required to show their Resident Identity Cards.
If some violating event happened, the owner of the cybercafé can send
the personal information to the police through the internet. It is
called a public security automation system, but it is actually an
integrated, multi-layered, internet blocking and monitoring system,
involving the technical, administrative, public security, national
security, publicity, etc. The features are known as: readable,
listenable, and thinkable.
Phase II
The
phase II project started in 2006. The main task was to enhance the
terminal construction, and the public security business application
system, trying to informatize of the public security work. The period
was two years.
Based on the phase I project, phase II project expanded the
information application types of public security business, and
informationized further public security information. The key points of
this project included application system construction, system
integration, the expansion of information centre, and information
construction in central and western provinces. The system of was
planning to strengthen the integration, to share and analysis of
information. It would greatly enhance the information for the public
security work support.
Sites related to the Taiwanese
government, media, or other organizations, including sites dedicated to
religious content, and most large Taiwanese community websites or blogs.
Web sites that contain anything the Chinese authorities regard as obscenity or pornography.
Most blogging sites experience frequent or permanent outages.
Web sites deemed as subversive.
Blocked web sites are indexed to a lesser degree, if at all, by some Chinese search engines. This sometimes has considerable impact on search results.
According to The New York Times, Google
has set up computer systems inside China that try to access Web sites
outside the country. If a site is inaccessible, then it is added to Google China's blacklist.
However, once unblocked, the Web sites will be reindexed.
Referring to Google's first-hand experience of the great firewall, there
is some hope in the international community that it will reveal some of
its secrets. Simon Davies, founder of London-based pressure group Privacy International,
is now challenging Google to reveal the technology it once used at
China's behest. "That way, we can understand the nature of the beast
and, perhaps, develop circumvention measures so there can be an opening
up of communications." "That would be a dossier of extraordinary
importance to human rights," Davies says. Google has yet to respond to
his call.
Because the Great Firewall blocks destination IP addresses and domain
names and inspects the data being sent or received, a basic censorship
circumvention strategy is to use proxy nodes and encrypt the data. Most
circumvention tools combine these two mechanisms.
Proxy servers
outside China can be used, although using just a simple open proxy
(HTTP or SOCKS) without also using an encrypted tunnel (such as HTTPS)
does little to circumvent the sophisticated censors.
Companies can establish regional Web sites within China. This
prevents their content from going through the Great Firewall of China;
however, it requires companies to apply for local ICP licenses.
Freegate, Ultrasurf, and Psiphon are free programs that circumvent the China firewall using multiple open proxies, but still behave as though the user is in China.
VPNs (virtual private network) and SSH
(secure shell) are the powerful and stable tools for bypassing
surveillance technologies. They use the same basic approaches, proxies
and encrypted channels, used by other circumvention tools, but depend on
a private host, a virtual host, or an account outside of China, rather
than open, free proxies.
Open application programming interface (API) used by Twitter which
enables to post and retrieve tweets on sites other than Twitter. "The
idea is that coders elsewhere get to Twitter, and offer up feeds at
their own URLs—which the government has to chase down one by one." says
Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
Reconfiguration at the end points of communication, encryption,
discarding reset packets according to the TTL value (time to live) by
distinguishing those resets generated by the Firewall and those made by
end user, not routing any further packets to sites that have triggered
blocking behavior.
Since at least 2015, the Russian Roskomnadzor
agency collaborates with Chinese Great Firewall security officials in
implementing its data retention and filtering infrastructure. Since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, in order to combat disinformation and enforce the war censorship law, Russia authorities began improving and widening the capabilities of this system.
Differences from the Great Firewall
The Golden Shield Project is distinct from the Great Firewall (GFW), which has a different mission. The differences are listed below:
Politically,
The GFW is a tool for the propaganda system, whereas the Golden Shield Project is a tool for the public security system.
The original requirements of the GFW are from the 610 office, whereas the original requirements of the Golden Shield Project are from the public security department.
The GFW is a national gateway for filtering foreign websites,
whereas the Golden Shield Project is for monitoring the domestic
internet.
Technically,
The GFW is attached to the three national internet exchange centres, and then spread to some of the ISPs to implement the blocking effect, whereas the Golden Shield Project stations in the most exchange centres and data centres.
The practice of mass surveillance in the United States dates back to wartime monitoring and censorship of international communications from, to, or which passed through the United States. After the First and Second World Wars, mass surveillance continued throughout the Cold War period, via programs such as the Black Chamber and Project SHAMROCK. The formation and growth of federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA institutionalized surveillance used to also silence political dissent, as evidenced by COINTELPRO projects which targeted various organizations and individuals. During the Civil Rights Movement
era, many individuals put under surveillance orders were first labelled
as integrationists, then deemed subversive, and sometimes suspected to
be supportive of the communist model of the United States' rival at the time, the Soviet Union.
Other targeted individuals and groups included Native American
activists, African American and Chicano liberation movement activists,
and anti-war protesters.
The formation of the international UKUSA surveillance agreement of 1946 evolved into the ECHELON collaboration by 1955 of five English-speaking nations, also known as the Five Eyes, and focused on interception of electronic communications, with substantial increases in domestic surveillance capabilities.
Following the September 11th attacks
of 2001, domestic and international mass surveillance capabilities grew
immensely. Contemporary mass surveillance relies upon annual
presidential executive orders declaring a continued State of National
Emergency, first signed by George W. Bush on September 14, 2001 and then
continued on an annual basis by President Barack Obama. Mass surveillance is also based on several subsequent national security Acts including the USA PATRIOT Act and FISA Amendment Act's PRISM
surveillance program. Critics and political dissenters currently
describe the effects of these acts, orders, and resulting database
network of fusion centers as forming a veritable American police state that simply institutionalized the illegal COINTELPRO tactics used to assassinate dissenters and leaders from the 1950s onwards.
Additional surveillance agencies, such as the DHS and the
position of Director of National Intelligence, have greatly escalated
mass surveillance since 2001. A series of media reports in 2013 revealed more recent programs and techniques employed by the US intelligence community. Advances in computer and information technology allow the creation of huge national databases that facilitate mass surveillance in the United States by DHS managed fusion centers, the CIA's Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) program, and the FBI's Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).
Mass surveillance databases are also cited as responsible for profiling Latino Americans and contributing to "self-deportation" techniques, or physical deportations by way of the DHS's ICEGang national database.
After World War I, the US Army and State Department established the Black Chamber, also known as the Cipher Bureau, which began operations in 1919. The Black Chamber was headed by Herbert O. Yardley,
who had been a leader in the Army's Military Intelligence program.
Regarded as a precursor to the National Security Agency, it conducted
peacetime decryption of material including diplomatic communications
until 1929.
In the advent of World War II, the Office of Censorship
was established. The wartime agency monitored "communications by mail,
cable, radio, or other means of transmission passing between the United
States and any foreign country". This included the 350,000 overseas cables and telegrams and 25,000 international telephone calls made each week.
"Every letter that crossed international or U.S. territorial borders
from December 1941 to August 1945 was subject to being opened and
scoured for details."
With the end of World War II, Project SHAMROCK
was established in 1945. The organization was created to accumulate
telegraphic data entering and exiting from the United States. Major communication companies such as Western Union, RCA Global and ITT World Communications actively aided the project, allowing American intelligence officials to gain access to international message traffic.
Under the project, and many subsequent programs, no precedent had been
established for judicial authorization, and no warrants were issued for
surveillance activities. The project was terminated in 1975.
President Harry S. Truman established the National Security Agency (NSA) in 1952 for the purposes of collecting, processing, and monitoring intelligence data. The existence of NSA was not known to people as the memorandum by President Truman was classified.
When the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI published stolen FBI documents revealing abuse of intelligence programs in 1971, Senator Frank Church began an investigation into the programs that become known as the Church Committee.
The committee sought to investigate intelligence abuses throughout the
1970s. Following a report provided by the committee outlining egregious
abuse, in 1976 Congress established the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It would later be joined by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 1978.
The institutions worked to limit the power of the agencies, ensuring
that surveillance activities remained within the rule of law.
Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed The Patriot Act to strengthen security and intelligence efforts. The act granted the President broad powers on the war against terror,
including the power to bypass the FISA Court for surveillance orders in
cases of national security. Additionally, mass surveillance activities
were conducted alongside various other surveillance programs under the
head of President's Surveillance Program. Under pressure from the public, the warrantless wiretapping program was allegedly ended in January 2007.
Many details about the surveillance activities conducted in the United States were revealed in the disclosure by Edward Snowden in June 2013.
Regarded as one of the biggest media leaks in the United States, it
presented extensive details about the surveillance programs of the NSA,
that involved interception of Internet data and telephonic calls from
over a billion users, across various countries.
National Security Agency (NSA)
At the request of the U.S. Army, those who protested against the Vietnam War were put on the NSA's "watch list".
1947: The National Security Act was signed by President Truman, establishing a National Security Council.
1949: The Armed Forces Security Agency was established to coordinate signal operations between military branches.
1952: The National Security Agency
(NSA) was officially established by President Truman by way of a
National Security Council Intelligence Directive 9, dated Oct. 24, while
the NSA officially came into existence days later on Nov. 4. According to The New York Times, the NSA was created in "absolute secrecy" by President Truman, whose surveillance-minded administration ordered, only six weeks after President Truman took office, wiretaps on the telephones of Thomas Gardiner Corcoran, a close advisor of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The recorded conversations are currently kept at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, along with other documents considered sensitive (≈233,600 pages).
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Institutional
domestic surveillance was founded in 1896 with the National Bureau of
Criminal Identification, which evolved by 1908 into the Bureau of
Investigation, operated under the authority of the Department of
Justice. In 1935, the FBI had grown into an independent agency under the
direction of J. Edgar Hoover whose staff, through the use of wire taps,
cable taps, mail tampering, garbage filtering and infiltrators,
prepared secret FBI Index Lists on more than 10 million people by 1939.
Purported to be chasing 'communists' and other alleged
subversives, the FBI used public and private pressure to destroy the
lives of those it targeted during McCarthyism, including those lives of the Hollywood 10 with the Hollywood blacklist.
The FBI's surveillance and investigation roles expanded in the 1950s
while using the collected information to facilitate political
assassinations, including the murders of Fred Hampton
and Mark Clark in 1969. FBI is also directly connected to the bombings,
assassinations, and deaths of other people including Malcolm X in 1963,
Viola Liuzzo in 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Anna Mae
Pictou Aquash in 1976, and Judi Bari in 1990.
As the extent of the FBI's domestic surveillance continued to
grow, many celebrities were also secretly investigated by the bureau,
including:
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt – A vocal critic of Hoover who likened the FBI to an 'American Gestapo' for its Index lists.
Roosevelt also spoke out against anti-Japanese prejudice during the
second world war, and was later a delegate to the United Nations and
instrumental in creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 3,000-page
FBI dossier on Eleanor Roosevelt reveals Hoover's close monitoring of
her activities and writings, and contains retaliatory charges against
her for suspected Communist activities.
Frank Sinatra – His 1,300 page FBI dossier, dating from 1943, contains allegations about Sinatra's possible ties to the American Communist Party. The FBI spent several decades tracking Sinatra and his associates.
Marilyn Monroe
– Her FBI dossier begins in 1955 and continues up until the months
before her death. It focuses mostly on her travels and associations,
searching for signs of leftist views and possible ties to communism. Her ex-husband, Arthur Miller, was also monitored.Monroe's FBI dossier is "heavily censored", but a "reprocessed" version has been released by the FBI to the public.
John Lennon – In 1971, shortly after Lennon arrived in the United States on a visa to meet up with anti-war activists, the FBI placed Lennon under surveillance, and the U.S. government tried to deport him from the country. At that time, opposition to the Vietnam War had reached a peak and Lennon often showed up at political rallies to sing his anti-war anthem "Give Peace a Chance". The U.S. government argued that Lennon's 300 page
FBI dossier was particularly sensitive because its release may "lead to
foreign diplomatic, economic and military retaliation against the
United States", and therefore only approved a "heavily censored" version.
Some of the greatest historical figures of the 20th century, including several U.S. citizens, were placed under warrantless surveillance for the purpose of character assassination – a process that aims to destroy the credibility and reputation of a person, institution, or nation.
Center: Martin Luther King Jr., a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, was the target of an intensive campaign by the FBI to "neutralize" him as an effective civil rights activist. An FBI memo recognized King to be the "most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.", and the agency wanted to discredit him by collecting evidence to (unsuccessfully) prove that he had been influenced by communism.
Right: Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the media in 1971, experienced one of the most spectacular episodes of government surveillance and character assassination. The White House tried to steal his medical records and other possibly detrimental information by sending a special unit to break into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist.These activities were later uncovered during the course of investigation as the Watergate scandal slowly unfolded, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
See also: The FBI kept a dossier on Albert Einstein (≈1,500 pages) and Martin Luther King Jr. (≈17,000 pages).
Due to a court order, however, some information has been removed and
many other pages will not be released until the year 2027.
1967–73: The now-defunct Project MINARET was created to spy on U.S. citizens. At the request of the U.S. Army, those who protested against the Vietnam War were put on the NSA's "watch list".
President Roosevelt
asked the FBI to put in its files the names of citizens sending
telegrams to the White House opposing his "national defense" policy and
supporting Col. Charles Lindbergh.
President Truman
received inside information on a former Roosevelt aide's efforts to
influence his appointments, labor union negotiating plans, and the
publishing plans of journalists.
The Kennedy administration ordered the FBI to wiretap a congressional staff member, three executive officials, a lobbyist, and a Washington law firm. US Attorney GeneralRobert F. Kennedy received data from an FBI wire tap on Martin Luther King Jr. and an electronic listening device targeting a congressman, both of which yielded information of a political nature.
President Johnson asked the FBI to conduct "name checks" on his critics and members of the staff of his 1964 opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater.
He also requested purely political intelligence on his critics in the
Senate, and received extensive intelligence reports on political
activity at the 1964 Democratic Convention from FBI electronic surveillance.
President Nixon
authorized a program of wiretaps which produced for the White House
purely political or personal information unrelated to national security,
including information about a Supreme Court justice.
A quarter of a million first class letters were opened and photographed by the CIA from 1953 to 1973.
Millions of private telegrams sent from, or to, through the United States were obtained by the National Security Agency (NSA), under a secret arrangement with U.S. telegraph companies, from 1947 to 1975.
Over 100,000 Americans have been indexed in U.S. Army intelligence files.
About 300,000 individuals were indexed in a CIA computer system during the course of Operation CHAOS.
Intelligence files on more than 11,000 individuals and groups were created by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), with tax investigations "done on the basis of political rather than tax criteria".
Several decades later in 2013, the presiding judge of the FISA Court, Reggie Walton, told The Washington Post
that the court only has a limited ability to supervise the government's
surveillance, and is therefore "forced" to rely upon the accuracy of
the information that is provided by federal agents.
On August 17, 1975 Senator Frank Church stated on NBC's "Meet the
Press" without mentioning the name of the NSA about this agency:
In the need to develop a capacity
to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government
has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the
messages that go through the air. Now, that is necessary and important
to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies.
We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be
turned around on the American people, and no American would have any
privacy left such is the capability to monitor everything — telephone
conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to
hide.
If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took
charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence
community has given the government could enable it to impose total
tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most
careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no
matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government
to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the
capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see
to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology
operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never
cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.
In 1988 an article titled "Somebody's listening" by Duncan Campbell in the New Statesman described the signals-intelligence gathering activities of a program code-named "ECHELON". The program was engaged by English-speaking World War II Allied countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States (collectively known as AUSCANNZUKUS). It was created by the five countries to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and of its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early 1960s.
By the 1990s the ECHELON system could intercept satellite transmissions, public switched telephone network (PSTN) communications (including most Internet traffic), and transmissions carried by microwave. The New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager provided a detailed description of ECHELON in his 1996 book Secret Power. While some member governments denied the existence of ECHELON, a report by a committee of the European Parliament in 2001 confirmed the program's use and warned Europeans about its reach and effects.
The European Parliament stated in its report that the term "ECHELON"
occurred in a number of contexts, but that the evidence presented
indicated it was a signals-intelligence collection system capable of
interception and content-inspection of telephone calls, fax, e-mail and
other data-traffic globally.
James Bamford further described the capabilities of ECHELON in Body of Secrets (2002) about the National Security Agency.
Intelligence monitoring of citizens, and their communications, in the
area covered by the AUSCANNZUKUS security agreement have, over the
years, caused considerable public concern.
We will come together to strengthen our intelligence capabilities to know the plans of terrorists before they act and to find them before they strike.
— President Bush speaking in Congress on September 20, 2001
The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon led to major reforms of U.S. intelligence agencies, and paved the way for the establishment of the Director of National Intelligence position.On 1 January 2006, days after The New York Times wrote that "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts, the President emphasized that "This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America. And I repeat, limited."
In the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, bulk domestic spying in the United States
increased dramatically. The desire to prevent future attacks of this
scale led to the passage of the Patriot Act. Later acts include the Protect America Act (which removes the warrant requirement for government surveillance of foreign targets) and the FISA Amendments Act (which relaxed some of the original FISA court requirements).
In 2002, "Total Information Awareness"
was established by the U.S. government in order to "revolutionize the
ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign
terrorists".
In 2005, a report about President Bush's President's Surveillance Program appeared in The New York Times. According to reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, the actual publication of their report was delayed for a year because "The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article".
Also in 2005, the existence of STELLARWIND was revealed by Thomas Tamm. In 2006, Mark Klein revealed the existence of Room 641A that he had wired back in 2003.
In 2008, Babak Pasdar, a computer security expert, and CEO of Bat Blue
publicly revealed the existence of the "Quantico circuit", that he and
his team found in 2003. He described it as a back door to the federal
government in the systems of an unnamed wireless provider; the company
was later independently identified as Verizon.
The NSA's database of American's phone calls was made public in 2006 by USA Today journalist Leslie Cauley in an article titled, "NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls." The article cites anonymous sources that described the program's reach on American citizens:
... it means that the government has detailed records of
calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members,
co-workers, business contacts and others. The three telecommunications
companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the
program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In 2009, The New York Times cited several anonymous
intelligence officials alleging that "the N.S.A. made Americans targets
in eavesdropping operations based on insufficient evidence tying them to
terrorism" and "the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress
without a warrant".
Acceleration of media leaks (2010–present)
On 15 March 2012, the American magazine Wired published an article with the headline "The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)", which was later mentioned by U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson during a congressional hearing. In response to Johnson's inquiry, NSA director Keith B. Alexander testified that these allegations made by Wired magazine were untrue:
Excerpt from Wired magazine's article originally published on 15 March 2012
NSA Director Keith Alexander's testimony to the United States Congress on 20 March 2012
On 6 June 2013, Britain's The Guardian
newspaper began publishing a series of revelations by an unnamed
American whistleblower, revealed several days later to be former CIA and
NSA-contracted systems analyst Edward Snowden. Snowden gave a cache of internal documents in support of his claims to two journalists: Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras,
Greenwald later estimated that the cache contains 15,000–20,000
documents, some very large and very detailed, and some very small. This was one of the largest news leaks in the modern history of the United States.
In over two months of publications, it became clear that the NSA
operates a complex web of spying programs which allow it to intercept
internet and telephone conversations from over a billion users from
dozens of countries around the world. Specific revelations have been
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 collect 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 overlap and interrelate among one another. These programs are
often done with the assistance of US entities such as the United States Department of Justice and the FBI, are sanctioned by US laws such as the FISA Amendments Act, and the necessary court orders for them are signed by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In addition to this, many of the NSA's programs are directly aided by national and foreign intelligence services, Britain's GCHQ and Australia's DSD, as well as by large private telecommunications and Internet corporations, such as Verizon, Telstra, Google and Facebook.
They (the NSA) can use the system
to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you've ever made, every
friend you've ever discussed something with, and attack you on that
basis to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone
in the context of a wrongdoer.
The US district court judge for the District of Columbia, Richard Leon, declared
on December 16, 2013 that the mass collection of metadata of
Americans' telephone records by the National Security Agency probably
violates the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches and
seizures.
Given the limited record before me at this point in the
litigation – most notably, the utter lack of evidence that a terrorist
attack has ever been prevented because searching the NSA database was
faster than other investigative tactics – I have serious doubts about
the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting
time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of
terrorism.
"Plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of showing that their
privacy interests outweigh the government's interest in collecting and
analysing bulk telephony metadata and therefore the NSA's bulk
collection program is indeed an unreasonable search under the fourth
amendment," he wrote.
"The Fourth Amendment typically requires 'a neutral and detached
authority be interposed between the police and the public,' and it is
offended by 'general warrants' and laws that allow searches to be
conducted 'indiscriminately and without regard to their connections with
a crime under investigation,'" he wrote. He added:
I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary
invasion' than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of
personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of
querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval. Surely such a
program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the founders
enshrined in the Fourth Amendment. Indeed I have little doubt that the
author of our Constitution, James Madison,
who cautioned us to beware 'the abridgement of freedom of the people by
gradual and silent encroachments by those in power,' would be aghast.
Leon granted the request for a preliminary injunction that blocks the
collection of phone data for two private plaintiffs (Larry Klayman, a
conservative lawyer, and Charles Strange, father of a cryptologist
killed in Afghanistan when his helicopter was shot down in 2011)
and ordered the government to destroy any of their records that have
been gathered. But the judge stayed action on his ruling pending a
government appeal, recognizing in his 68-page opinion the "significant
national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the
constitutional issues."
H.R.4681 – Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015
On 20 May 2014, U.S. Representative for Michigan's 8th congressional district Republican congressman Mike Rogers
introduced Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 with the
goal of authorizing appropriations for fiscal years 2014 and 2015 for
intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States
Government, the Community Management Account, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Retirement and Disability System, and for other purposes.
Some of its measures cover the limitation on retention. A covered
communication (meaning any nonpublic telephone or electronic
communication acquired without the consent of a person who is a party to
the communication, including communications in electronic storage)
shall not be retained in excess of 5 years, unless: (i) the
communication has been affirmatively determined, in whole or in part, to
constitute foreign intelligence or counterintelligence or is necessary
to understand or assess foreign intelligence or counterintelligence;
(ii) the communication is reasonably believed to constitute evidence of a
crime and is retained by a law enforcement agency; (iii) the
communication is enciphered or reasonably believed to have a secret
meaning; (iv) all parties to the communication are reasonably believed
to be non-United States persons; (v) retention is necessary to protect
against an imminent threat to human life, in which case both the nature
of the threat and the information to be retained shall be reported to
the congressional intelligence committees not later than 30 days after
the date such retention is extended under this clause; (vi) retention is
necessary for technical assurance or compliance purposes, including a
court order or discovery obligation, in which case access to information
retained for technical assurance or compliance purposes shall be
reported to the congressional intelligence committees on an annual
basis; (vii) retention for a period in excess of 5 years is approved by
the head of the element of the intelligence community responsible for
such retention, based on a determination that retention is necessary to
protect the national security of the United States, in which case the
head of such element shall provide to the congressional intelligence
committees a written certification describing (I) the reasons extended
retention is necessary to protect the national security of the United
States; (II) the duration for which the head of the element is
authorizing retention; (III) the particular information to be retained;
and (IV) the measures the element of the intelligence community is
taking to protect the privacy interests of United States persons or
persons located inside the United States.
On 10 December 2014, RepublicanU.S. Representative for Michigan's 3rd congressional district member of CongressJustin Amash
criticized the act on his Facebook as being "one of the most egregious
sections of law I've encountered during my time as a representative" and
"It grants the executive branch virtually unlimited access to the
communications of every American".
USA Freedom Act
The USA Freedom Act
was signed into law on June 2, 2015, the day after certain provisions
of the Patriot Act had expired. It mandated an end to bulk collection
of phone call metadata by the NSA within 180 days, but allowed continued
mandatory retention of metadata by phone companies with access by the
government with case-by-case approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Modalities, concepts, and methods
Official seal of the Information Awareness Office – a U.S. agency which developed technologies for mass surveillance
Under the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, the U.S.
Postal Service photographs the exterior of every piece of paper mail
that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces in
2012. The U.S. Postmaster General stated that the system is primarily
used for mail sorting, but the images are available for possible use by
law enforcement agencies.
Created in 2001 following the anthrax attacks that killed five people,
it is a sweeping expansion of a 100-year-old program called "mail cover"
which targets people suspected of crimes. Together, the two programs
show that postal mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the
National Security Agency gives to telephone calls, e-mail, and other
forms of electronic communication.
Mail cover surveillance requests are granted for about 30 days,
and can be extended for up to 120 days. Images captured under the Mail
Isolation Control and Tracking program are retained for a week to 30
days and then destroyed.
There are two kinds of mail covers: those related to criminal activity
and those requested to protect national security. Criminal activity
requests average 15,000 to 20,000 per year, while the number of requests
for national security mail covers has not been made public. Neither the
Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program nor the mail cover program
require prior approval by a judge. For both programs the information
gathered is metadata from the outside of the envelope or package for
which courts have said there is no expectation of privacy. Opening the mail to view its contents would require a warrant approved by a judge.
The Total Information Awareness program, of the Information Awareness Office, was formed in 2002 by the Pentagon and led by former rear admiral John Poindexter. The program designed numerous technologies to be used to perform mass surveillance. Examples include advanced speech-to-text
programs (so that phone conversations can be monitored en-masse by a
computer, instead of requiring human operators to listen to them), social network analysis
software to monitor groups of people and their interactions with each
other, and "Human identification at a distance" software which allows
computers to identify people on surveillance cameras by their facial
features and gait (the way they walk). The program was later renamed "Terrorism Information Awareness", after a negative public reaction.
In 1999 two models of mandatory data retention were suggested for the US. The first model would record the IP address
assigned to a customer at a specific time. In the second model, "which
is closer to what Europe adopted", telephone numbers dialed, contents of
Web pages visited, and recipients of e-mail messages must be retained
by the ISP for an unspecified amount of time. In 2006 the International Association of Chiefs of Police
adopted a resolution calling for a "uniform data retention mandate" for
"customer subscriber information and source and destination
information." The U.S. Department of Justice
announced in 2011 that criminal investigations "are being frustrated"
because no law currently exists to force Internet providers to keep
track of what their customers are doing.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an ongoing lawsuit (Hepting v. AT&T) against the telecom giant AT&T Inc.
for its assistance to the U.S. government in monitoring the
communications of millions of American citizens. It has managed thus far
to keep the proceedings open. Recently the documents, which were
exposed by a whistleblower who had previously worked for AT&T, and
showed schematics of the massive data mining system, were made public.
Internet communications
The FBI developed the computer programs "Magic Lantern" and CIPAV, which it can remotely install on a computer system, in order to monitor a person's computer activity.
The NSA has been gathering information on financial records,
Internet surfing habits, and monitoring e-mails. It has also performed
extensive surveillance on social networks such as Facebook.
Recently, Facebook has revealed that, in the last six months of 2012,
they handed over the private data of between 18,000 and 19,000 users to
law enforcement of all types—including local police and federal
agencies, such as the FBI, Federal Marshals and the NSA.
One form of wiretapping utilized by the NSA is RADON, a bi-directional
host tap that can inject Ethernet packets onto the same target. It
allows bi-directional exploitation of Denied networks using standard
on-net tools. The one limitation of RADON is that it is a USB device
that requires a physical connection to a laptop or PC to work. RADON was
created by a Massachusetts firm called Netragard. Their founder, Adriel
Desautels, said about RADON, "it is our 'safe' malware. RADON is
designed to enable us to infect customer systems in a safe and
controllable manner. Safe means that every strand is built with an
expiration date that, when reached, results in RADON performing an
automatic and clean self-removal."
The NSA is also known to have splitter sites in the United
States. Splitter sites are places where a copy of every packet is
directed to a secret room where it is analyzed by the Narus STA 6400, a
deep packet inspection device.
Although the only known location is at 611 Folsom Street, San
Francisco, California, expert analysis of Internet traffic suggests that
there are likely several locations throughout the United States.
Advertising data
In September 2022 the EFF and AP revealed their investigation into the use of advertising IDs to develop the Fog Reveal database.
Fog Reveal aggregates location data from mobile applications, which is
then supplied as a service to United States law enforcement agencies.
Intelligence apparatus to monitor Americans
Since the September 11 attacks,
a vast domestic intelligence apparatus has been built to collect
information using FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and
military criminal investigators. The intelligence apparatus collects,
analyzes and stores information about millions of (if not all) American
citizens, most of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing. Every
state and local law enforcement agency is to feed information to federal
authorities to support the work of the FBI.
The PRISM special source operation system was enabled by the Protect America Act of 2007 under President Bush and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008,
which legally immunized private companies that cooperated voluntarily
with US intelligence collection and was renewed by Congress under
President Obama in 2012 for five years until December 2017. According to
The Register, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 "specifically
authorizes intelligence agencies to monitor the phone, email, and other
communications of U.S. citizens for up to a week without obtaining a
warrant" when one of the parties is outside the U.S.
PRISM was first publicly revealed on 6 June 2013, after classified documents about the program were leaked to The Washington Post and The Guardian by Edward Snowden.
Telephones
In early 2006, USA Today reported that several major telephone companies were cooperating illegally with the National Security Agency to monitor the phone records of U.S. citizens, and storing them in a large database known as the NSA call database. This report came on the heels of allegations that the U.S. government had been conducting electronic surveillance of domestic telephone calls without warrants.
Law enforcement and intelligence services in the United States
possess technology to remotely activate the microphones in cell phones
in order to listen to conversations that take place nearby the person
who holds the phone.
U.S. federal agents regularly use mobile phones to collect location data. The geographical location of a mobile phone (and thus the person carrying it) can be determined easily (whether it is being used or not), using a technique known multilateration to calculate the differences in time for a signal to travel from the cell phone to each of several cell towers near the owner of the phone.
As worldwide sales of smartphones began exceeding those of feature phones, the NSA decided to take advantage of the smartphone boom. This is particularly advantageous because the smartphone combines a myriad of data that would interest an intelligence agency, such as social contacts, user behavior, interests, location, photos and credit card numbers and passwords.
An internal NSA report from 2010 stated that the spread of the
smartphone has been occurring "extremely rapidly"—developments that
"certainly complicate traditional target analysis." According to the document, 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.
Under the heading "iPhone capability", the document notes that there
are smaller NSA programs, known as "scripts", that can perform
surveillance on 38 different features of the iPhone 3 and iPhone 4 operating systems. These include the mapping feature, voicemail and photos, as well as Google Earth, Facebook and Yahoo! Messenger.
The FBI collected nearly all hotel, airline, rental car, gift shop, and casino records in Las Vegas
during the last two weeks of 2003. The FBI requested all electronic
data of hundreds of thousands of people based on a very general lead for
the Las Vegas New Year's celebration. The Senior VP of The Mirage went on record with PBS' Frontline describing the first time they were requested to help in the mass collection of personal information.
Surveillance cameras
Wide
Area Persistent Surveillance (also Wide Area Motion Imaging) is a form
of airborne surveillance system that collects pattern-of-life data by
recording motion images of an area larger than a city – in sub-meter
resolution. This video allows for anyone within the field of regard to
be tracked – both live and retroactively, for forensic analysis. The
use of sophisticated tracking algorithms applied to the WAMI dataset
also enables mass automated geo-location tracking of every vehicle and
pedestrian.
WAMI sensors are typically mounted on manned airplanes, drones, blimps
and aerostats. WAMI is currently in use on the southern border of the US
and has been deployed in Baltimore, Dayton Ohio as well as in Los Angeles, specifically targeting Compton. Wide Area Persistent Surveillance systems such as ARGUS WAMI
are capable of live viewing and recording a 68 square mile area with
enough detail to view pedestrians and vehicles and generate
chronographs. These WAMI cameras, such as Gorgon Stare, Angelfire, Hiper Stare, Hawkeye and ARGUS,
create airborne video so detailed that pedestrians can be followed
across the city through forensic analysis. This allows investigators to
rewind and playback the movements of anyone within this 68 square mile
area for hours, days or even months at a time depending on the airframe
the WAMI sensors are mounted on. JLENS, a surveillance aerostat
scheduled for deployment over the east coast of the US, is a form of
WAMI that uses sophisticated radar imaging along with electro-optical
WAMI sensors to enable mass geo-location tracking of ground vehicles.
While a resistance to the domestic deployment of WAMI has emerged
in areas where the public has learned of the technologies use, the
deployments have been intentionally hidden from the public, as in
Compton California, where the mayor learned about the surveillance from groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, Teame Zazzu and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
PeSEAS and PerMIATE software automate and record the movement observed in the WAMI video.
This technology uses software to track and record the movements of
pedestrians and vehicles using automatic object recognition software
across the entire frame, generating "tracklets" or chronographs of every
car and pedestrian movements. 24/7 deployment of this technology has
been suggested by the DHS on spy blimps such as the recently killed Blue
Devil Airship.
Traffic cameras,
which were meant to help enforce traffic laws at intersections, have
also sparked some controversy, due to their use by law enforcement
agencies for purposes unrelated to traffic violations.
These cameras also work as transit choke-points that allow individuals
inside the vehicle to be positively identified and license plate data to
be collected and time stamped for cross reference with airborne WAMI such as ARGUS and HAWKEYE used by police and Law Enforcement.
The Department of Homeland Security is funding networks of surveillance cameras in cities and towns as part of its efforts to combat terrorism. In February 2009, Cambridge, MA rejected the cameras due to privacy concerns.
In July 2020, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reported
that the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) used a camera network in
the city's Business Improvement District amid protests against police
violence.
The report claims that the SFPD's usage of the camera network went
beyond investigating footage, likening the department's access to
real-time video feeds as "indiscriminate surveillance of protestors."
Earlier in 2012, Congress passed a US$63 billion bill that will grant four years of additional funding to the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA). Under the bill, the FAA is required to provide military and
commercial drones with expanded access to U.S. airspace by October 2015.
In February 2013, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department
explained that these drones would initially be deployed in large public
gatherings, including major protests. Over time, tiny drones would be
used to fly inside buildings to track down suspects and assist in
investigations. According to The Los Angeles Times, the main advantage of using drones is that they offer "unblinking eye-in-the-sky coverage". They can be modified to carry high-resolution video cameras, infrared sensors, license plate readers, listening devices, and be disguised as sea gulls or other birds to mask themselves.
In 2013, a Washington, D.C. undercover cop infiltrated peace groups.
The Intercept claimed that in 2020, the FBI paid an informant to pose as organizer in Denver, Colorado during the George Floyd protests.
This informant particularly infiltrated and undermined protest
movements by accusing other genuine activists of being FBI informants.
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 is performed by the so-called "Five Eyes", a term referring to the following English-speaking western democracies and their respective intelligence agencies:
– 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 some of the most advanced technical abilities among the "five eyes".
In 2013, media disclosures revealed how other government agencies have cooperated extensively with the "Five Eyes":
– 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.
– The Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service)
of Germany systematically transfers metadata from German intelligence
sources to the NSA. In December 2012 alone, Germany provided the NSA
with 500 million metadata records. The NSA granted the Bundesnachrichtendienst access to X-Keyscore, in exchange for Mira4 and Veras. In early 2013, Hans-Georg Maaßen, President of the German domestic security agency BfV, made several visits to the headquarters of the NSA. According to classified documents of the German government, Maaßen had agreed to transfer all data collected by the BfV via XKeyscore to the NSA. In addition, the BfV has been working very closely with eight other U.S. government agencies, including the CIA.
– The Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst (General Intelligence and Security Service) of the Netherlands has been receiving and storing user information gathered by U.S. intelligence sources such as PRISM.
– The National Defence Radio Establishment of Sweden (codenamed Sardines) has been working extensively with the NSA, and it has granted the "five eyes" access to underwater cables in the Baltic Sea.
– The Federal Intelligence Service (FSI) of Switzerland regularly exchanges information with the NSA, based on a secret agreement. In addition, the NSA has been granted access to Swiss monitoring facilities in Leuk (canton of Valais) and Herrenschwanden (canton of Bern).
Top secret documents leaked by Edward 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-Eurasiansupercontinent 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 USA 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.
Aside from the "Five Eyes", most other Western countries are also
participating in the NSA surveillance system and sharing information
with each other.
However, being a partner of the NSA does not automatically exempt a
country from being targeted by the NSA. 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."
Examples of members of the "Five Eyes" spying for each other:
The U.S. National Security Agency spied on and intercepted the phone calls of Princess Diana right until she died in a Paris car crash with Dodi Fayed
in 1997. The NSA currently holds 1,056 pages of classified information
about Princess Diana, which cannot be released to the public because
their disclosure is expected to cause "exceptionally grave damage" to the national security of the United States.
Uses of intercepted data
Most of the NSA's collected data
which was seen by human eyes (i.e., used by NSA operatives) was used in
accordance with the stated objective of combating terrorism.
In addition to combatting terrorism, these surveillance programs
have been employed to assess the foreign policy and economic stability
of other countries.
According to reports by Brazil's O Globo newspaper, the collected data was also used to target "commercial secrets". In a statement addressed to the National Congress of Brazil, journalist Glenn Greenwald testified that the U.S. government uses counter-terrorism
as a "pretext" for clandestine surveillance in order to compete with
other countries in the "business, industrial and economic fields".
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 that "We steal stuff to make you safe, not to make you
rich".
According to documents seen by the news agency Reuters,
information obtained in this way is subsequently funnelled 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, known as parallel construction. (Were the true origins known, the evidence and resulting case might be invalidated as "fruit of the poisonous tree", a legal doctrine designed to deter abuse of power that prevents evidence
or subsequent events being used in a case if they resulted from a
search or other process that does not conform to legal requirements.)
According to NSA Chief Compliance Officer John DeLong, most
violations of the NSA's rules were self-reported, and most often
involved spying on personal love interests using surveillance technology of the agency.
Most agricultural surveillance is not covert and is carried out by government agencies such as APHIS (USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service).
DHS has lamented the limited surveillance coverage provided by these
inspections and works to augment this protection with their own
resources.
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