{"id":44069,"date":"2014-06-30T19:03:35","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T18:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=44069"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:33:43","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:33:43","slug":"how-secret-partners-expand-nsas-surveillance-dragnet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/06\/how-secret-partners-expand-nsas-surveillance-dragnet\/","title":{"rendered":"How Secret Partners Expand NSA\u2019s Surveillance Dragnet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Top-secret<\/a>

Top-secret documents reveal how the NSA has established secret partnerships to spy on huge flows of private data.<\/p><\/div>\n

18 Jun 2014 – <\/em>Huge volumes of private emails, phone calls, and internet chats are being intercepted by the National Security Agency with the secret cooperation of more foreign governments than previously known, according to newly disclosed documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden.<\/p>\n

The classified files, revealed today by the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information<\/em><\/a> in a reporting collaboration with The Intercept<\/em>, shed light on how the NSA\u2019s surveillance of global communications has expanded under a clandestine program, known as RAMPART-A, that depends on the participation of a growing network of intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n

It has already been widely reported that the NSA works closely with eavesdropping agencies in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia as part of the so-called Five Eyes surveillance alliance. But the latest Snowden documents show that a number of other countries, described by the NSA as \u201cthird-party partners,\u201d are playing an increasingly important role \u2013 by secretly allowing the NSA to install surveillance equipment on their fiber-optic cables.<\/p>\n

The NSA documents state that under RAMPART-A, foreign partners \u201cprovide access to cables and host U.S. equipment.\u201d This allows the agency to covertly tap into \u201ccongestion points around the world\u201d where it says it can intercept the content of phone calls, faxes, e-mails, internet chats, data from virtual private networks, and calls made using Voice over IP software like Skype.<\/p>\n

The program, which the secret files show cost U.S. taxpayers about $170 million between 2011 and 2013, sweeps up a vast amount of communications at lightning speed. According to the intelligence community\u2019s classified \u201cBlack Budget<\/a>\u201d for 2013, RAMPART-A enables the NSA to tap into three terabits of data every second as the data flows across the compromised cables \u2013 the equivalent of being able to download about 5,400 uncompressed high-definition movies every minute.<\/p>\n

In an emailed statement, the NSA declined to comment on the RAMPART-A program. \u201cThe fact that the U.S. government works with other nations, under specific and regulated conditions, mutually strengthens the security of all,\u201d said NSA spokeswoman Vanee\u2019 Vines. \u201cNSA\u2019s efforts are focused on ensuring the protection of the national security of the United States, its citizens, and our allies through the pursuit of valid foreign intelligence targets only.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"rampart-a<\/a><\/p>\n

The secret documents reveal that the NSA has set up at least 13 RAMPART-A sites, nine of which were active in 2013. Three of the largest \u2013 codenamed AZUREPHOENIX, SPINNERET and MOONLIGHTPATH \u2013 mine data from some 70 different cables or networks. The precise geographic locations of the sites and the countries cooperating with the program are among the most carefully guarded of the NSA\u2019s secrets, and these details are not contained in the Snowden files. However, the documents point towards some of the countries involved \u2013 Denmark and Germany among them.<\/p>\n

An NSA memo<\/a> prepared for a 2012 meeting between the then-NSA director, Gen. Keith Alexander, and his Danish counterpart noted that the NSA had a longstanding partnership with the country\u2019s intelligence service on a special \u201ccable access\u201d program. Another document<\/a>, dated from 2013 and first published by Der Spiegel<\/em> on Wednesday, describes a German cable access point under a program that was operated by the NSA, the German intelligence service BND, and an unnamed third partner.<\/p>\n

The Danish and German operations appear to be associated with RAMPART-A because it is the only NSA cable-access initiative that depends on the cooperation of third-party partners. Other NSA operations tap cables without the consent or knowledge of the countries that host the cables, or are operated from within the United States with the assistance of American telecommunications companies that have international links. One secret NSA document<\/a> notes that most of the RAMPART-A projects are operated by the partners \u201cunder the cover of an overt comsat effort,\u201d suggesting that the tapping of the fiber-optic cables takes place at Cold War-era eavesdropping stations in the host countries, usually identifiable by their large white satellite dishes and radomes.<\/p>\n

A shortlist of other countries potentially involved in the RAMPART-A operation is contained in the Snowden archive. A classified presentation dated 2013, published recently in Intercept<\/em> editor Glenn Greenwald\u2019s book No Place To Hide<\/em><\/a>, revealed that the NSA had top-secret spying agreements with 33 third-party countries, including Denmark, Germany, and 15 other European Union member states:<\/p>\n

\"sigint-partners<\/a><\/p>\n

For any foreign government, allowing the NSA to secretly tap private communications is politically explosive, hence the extreme secrecy shrouding the names of those involved. But governments that participate in RAMPART-A get something in return: access to the NSA\u2019s sophisticated surveillance equipment, so they too can spy on the mass of data that flows in and out of their territory.<\/p>\n

The partnership deals operate on the condition that the host country will not use the NSA\u2019s spy technology to collect any data on U.S. citizens. The NSA also agrees that it will not use the access it has been granted to collect data on the host countries\u2019 citizens. One NSA document notes<\/a> that \u201cthere ARE exceptions\u201d to this rule \u2013 though does not state what those exceptions may be.<\/p>\n

According to Snowden, the agreements that the NSA has in place with its partners are lax and easily circumvented. In a statement<\/a> to the European parliament in March, he used Denmark and Germany as examples to describe how the NSA had effectively established what he called a \u201cEuropean bazaar\u201d for surveillance.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn EU member state like Denmark may give the NSA access to a tapping center on the (unenforceable) condition that NSA doesn\u2019t search it for Danes, and Germany may give the NSA access to another on the condition that it doesn\u2019t search for Germans,\u201d Snowden said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet the two tapping sites may be two points on the same cable, so the NSA simply captures the communications of the German citizens as they transit Denmark, and the Danish citizens as they transit Germany, all the while considering it entirely in accordance with their agreements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source documents for this article can be found here<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Ryan Gallagher is a Scottish journalist whose work at <\/em>The Intercept<\/em> is focused on government surveillance, technology, and civil liberties. His journalism has appeared in publications including <\/em>Slate<\/em>, the<\/em> Guardian<\/em>, <\/em>Ars Technica<\/em>, <\/em>Huffington Post<\/em>, the <\/em>Sydney Morning Herald<\/em>, the <\/em>Financial Times<\/em>, the <\/em>Independent<\/em>, and the <\/em>New Statesman<\/em>. Since 2011, Ryan has broken a series of national and international stories about controversial surveillance technologies, shining a light on spy agencies and uncovering links between Western technology firms and governments in repressive countries. He took home an award for his reporting at the 2013 Information Security Journalism Awards and he has received acclaim for his writing on a diverse range of subjects, encompassing everything from the FBI\u2019s attempted infiltration of WikiLeaks to mass protests in Madrid and homelessness in England. Most recently, Ryan has been reporting from Rio de Janerio on the cache of secret files leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

18 Jun 2014 – Huge volumes of private emails, phone calls, and internet chats are being intercepted by the National Security Agency with the secret cooperation of more foreign governments than previously known, according to newly disclosed documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}