This page from GCHQ’s internal GCWiki describes the BLAZING SADDLES tool for handling huge amounts of metadata and the specialised analysis it supports: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This undated page from GCHQ’s internal GCWiki describes the agency’s audit procedure to document compliance with the UK Human Rights Act: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This GCHQ slide taken from a presentation dates 27 November 2008 confirms that agency metadata repositories can be datamined for information relating to individuals within the UK: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This GCHQ presentation from 23 March 2009 discusses the agency’s plan for “processing Events [metadata] at scale”: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This joint NSA/GCHQ research paper dated 20 January 2011 cites encryption as a threat impacting on both agencies: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This undated GCHQ spreadshhet clarifies how the agency categorises different aspects of intercepted communications: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This set of GCHQ minutes from 29 February 2008 describes a set of tools that were under development at that point, including the metadata analysis tool KARMA POLICE: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This GCHQ document from 18 August 2009 describes BLACK HOLE, a massive data repository, and describes how this interacts with other systems developed by the agency: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This GCHQ presentation from July 2011 discusses various technical aspects of “population-scale” datamining: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This GCHQ presentation from March 2009 describes the BLACKHOLE database used to store raw metadata records from TEMPORA, with about 10 billion records being added each day: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This GCHQ research paper from 6 November 2009 outlines what kinds of data the agency can extract from internet radio stations and their listenership, grouped by country: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This GCHQ presentation from 2010 describes the extent of the agency’s cable-tapping and plans for the future: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This GCHQ briefing from September 2009 describes the tools then available to analyse metadata collected on a massive scale: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This undated page from GCHQ’s internal GCWiki shows that the agency’s usual retention periods for metadata and content can be extended for cyber defence purposes: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This GCHQ presentation from November 2010 shows that the agency was logging 30 billion metadata records per day by that year: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This undated page from GCHQ’s internal GCWiki provides a definition of “event”, the term the agency uses to refer to a metadata record, showing the variety of data collected: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This short extract from a July 2009 GCHQ document describes BLACK HOLE, the agency’s massive respository for unselected metadata: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This GCHQ document from July 2010 looks forward to agency goals for 2013, including the aspiration to build “the world’s biggest SIGINT engine”: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This GCHQ spreadsheet from October 2007 provides a guide to the permissibility of using named GCHQ and NSA databases and shows the absence of safeguards against exploiting the metadata of persons located in the UK: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This undated GCHQ presentation describes SOCIAL ANTHROPOID, a “converged comms database” that analyses metadata from emails, instant messenger chats, social media connections and conversations, together with “telephony” metadata from phone calls, mobile phone locations, text and multimedia messages: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 […]

This GCHQ presentation from March 2009 shows that the agency has targeted a number of popular websites in a concerted effort to harvest cookies (“target detection indentifiers”) on a massive scale: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This undated page from GCHQ’s internal GCWiki shows some of the background to the agency’s attack on Dutch SIM manufacturer Gemalto, specifically the harvesting of facebook cookies associated with the firm’s staff: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This internal GCHQ form, which is undated, shows the procedure UK analysts follow for surveilling, or searching through already-acquired data for information from a person or organisation in a “sensitive” location – including the British Isles: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This undated page from GCHQ’s internal GCWiki provides technical information about the agency’s BLACK HOLE repository: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This undated GCHQ presentation includes, in its speakers notes, the statements that “We have a light oversight regime compared to [the] US” and “judicial oversight… [is] the main issue for us”: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This undated GCHQ presentation describes some of the Question Focused Databases (QFDs) developed to analyse the massive amount of raw data the agency collects from undersea cables: see the Intercept article Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, 25 September 2015.

This 18 April 2012 post from the NSA internal newsletter SSO Weekly reveals that AT&T (FAIRVIEW) cooperated with the NSA, under the terms of a FISA court order, to enable the agency to surveil the internet traffic going to and from the United Nations headquarters in New York: see the New York Times article AT&T […]

This 28 March 2012 post from the NSA internal newsletter SSO Weekly describes the agency’s relationship with AT&T (FAIRVIEW) as “highly collaborative”: see the New York Times article AT&T Helped U.S. Spy on Internet on a Vast Scale, 15 August 2015.

This 13 January 2012 post from the NSA internal newsletter SSO Weekly mentions the “extreme willingness to help” of AT&T (FAIRVIEW) towards the agency: see the New York Times article AT&T Helped U.S. Spy on Internet on a Vast Scale, 15 August 2015.

This 23 August 2011 post from the internal NSA newsletter SSO Weekly describes the disruption caused to collection from a Japanese-American cable by an earthquake. The date of service resumption correlated with the AT&T operated cable in the region: see the New York Times article AT&T Helped U.S. Spy on Internet on a Vast Scale, […]