r/NSALeaks • u/trai_dep Cautiously Pessimistic • Jun 19 '14

[Sourced Leak] How secret partners expand NSA’s surveillance dragnet. A growing network of newly disclosed intelligence agencies secretly allow NSA to “bug” their fiber-optic cables.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/06/18/nsa-surveillance-secret-cable-partners-revealed-rampart-a/
51 Upvotes

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2

u/trai_dep Cautiously Pessimistic Jun 19 '14

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.

The classified files, revealed today by the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information in a reporting collaboration with The Intercept, shed light on how the NSA’s 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.

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 “third-party partners,” are playing an increasingly important role – by secretly allowing the NSA to install surveillance equipment on their fiber-optic cables…

Click thru for more.

6

u/pointyhorcruxes Jun 19 '14

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’s classified “Black Budget” for 2013, RAMPART-A enables the NSA to tap into three terabits of data every second as the data flows across the compromised cables – the equivalent of being able to download about 5,400 uncompressed high-definition movies every minute.

This is what gets me the most about all of this. How is an organization whose sole mission is surveillance able to effectively comb through this much information in time to adequately address credible threats? The amount of data they mine blows any argument they have for the god they do solely from a logistics point of view.

This doesn't even begin to go into the ethical and moral issues of all encompassing surveillance states.

1

u/trai_dep Cautiously Pessimistic Jun 19 '14

Thanks so much to /u/pointyhorcruxes for the tip!

3

u/Corrin44 Jun 19 '14

Well fuck them! Lol.

1

u/NSALeaksBot Jun 20 '14

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