This 24 May 2010 NSA presentation describes the ways the agency uses botnets (“bot herding”): see the Der Spiegel article The Digital Arms Race: NSA Preps America for Future Battle, 17 January 2015.

This 12 June 2009 post from NSA’s internal SIDToday newsletter recounts a German/Afghan targeted operation and its support from the agency: see the Der Spiegel article Obama’s Lists: A Dubious History of Targeted Killings in Afghanistan, 28 December 2014.

This extract from a July 2008 NSA document describes Argentina as GCHQ’s “primary interest” in Latin America: see the Intercept article Britain Used Spy Team to Shape Latin American Public Opinion on Falklands, 2 April 2015.

This NSA document contains the short text of the Alice Springs Resolution, a 2014 agreement designed to allow common metadata sharing between the Five Eyes intelligence alliance: see the Intercept article How London’s 7/7 Bombings Led to “Unprecedented” Surveillance Tactics, 1 March 2018.

This set of NSA talking points, dated 10 April 2013, outlines a plan for continuing the GCE intelligence-sharing arrangement beyond the Afghan war, which NSA and GCHQ would collaborate on closely: see the Intercept article The Powerful Global Spy Alliance You Never Knew Existed, 1 March 2018.

This 12 August 2010 post from the NSA’s internal newsletter SIDToday describes the outcomes of the annual Sigint Seniors Europe (SSEURP) conference, which agreed in principle to increase information sharing: see the Intercept article The Powerful Global Spy Alliance You Never Knew Existed, 1 March 2018.

This 114-page NSA training presentation from 2009 explains how agency analysts can exploit HTTP traffic within XKeyScore: see the Intercept article XKEYSCORE: NSA’s Google for the World’s Private Communications, 1 July 2015.

This September 2009 NSA presentation outline some of the insights that analysts can gather from online social networks (OSNs) and show the XKeyScore interface for performing such searches: see the book No Place To Hide, 13 May 2014.

This NSA presentation from March 2009 explains how agency analysts can exploit HTTP data through XKeyScore: see the Intercept article XKEYSCORE: NSA’s Google for the World’s Private Communications, 1 July 2015.

An NSA document from 2008 shows that efforts to collect data from players of World of Warcraft started that year with the development of specialised exploits by GCHQ. The operation was based at Menwith Hill in the UK: see the New York Times article Spies’ Dragnet Reaches a Playing Field of Elves and Trolls, 9 […]

This NSA classification guide, dated 21 November 2011, covers signals intelligence material that as to be kept secret for more than the standard 60 years: see the Der Spiegel article The NSA in Germany: Snowden’s Documents Available for Download, 18 June 2014.

This undated internal NSA document illustrates the degrees of cooperation in the agency’s relationships with different foreign powers. “Tier A” and “Tier B” are elsewhere referred to as Second and Third Parties: see the book No Place To Hide, 13 May 2014.

This internal NSA document from April 2013 gives background information to prepare for the then GCHQ Director’s visit on 30 April and 1 May; included topics include access to PRISM data, FLAME malware, Iran, Syria and Israel: see the Intercept article British Spy Chiefs Secretly Begged to Play in NSA’s Data Pools, 30 April 2014. […]

Members of the military and veterans are thanked and remembered on Veterans Day. 

The U.S. Navy worked with the NSA to find a handset traveling with a shipment of narcotics in the Arabian Sea. The French navy boarded the vessel, seizing 3.5 tons of hashish. But the handset was no longer on board; it was subsequently located on the vessel from which the drugs had been transferred, and the crew of that vessel was also taken into custody.

A Marine Expeditionary Force was “astounded” at reporting from Iraq’s signals intelligence agency, reports the chief of an NSA task force to rebuild the Iraqi agency. The Iraqi SIGINT Element, as the agency is known, recently was collecting over 5,000 calls per day with roughly 100 staff and “basic equipment.” Preparations were under way to give the agency the ability to intercept Global System Mobile phones and high-frequency communications.

A member of the GCHQ's Fort Meade-based U.K. Liaison Team discusses some of the similarities and differences between the Signals Intelligence Directorate and the GCHQ: they both have similar counterterrorism missions, but the NSA is much larger and the office has cubicles as opposed to being open plan.

The Menwith Hill Station takes a direct role in combat search and rescue (CSAR) operations, processing distress transmissions received from troops and sending them to rescue efforts. The station has successfully aided in the rescue of U.S. personnel in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, and participates in CSAR trainings and simulations with U.K. Special Forces.

An NSA employee assigned to the Australian signals intelligence partner, Defence Signals Directorate, misses bagels but otherwise finds life in Canberra pleasant.

Following up on the State Department’s travel advisory for the United Kingdom in the wake of the London bombings, the Signals Intelligence Directorate’s operational security team reminds staff to be “alert, aware, and smart” when they’re traveling. 

The Five Eyes partners held a conference to discuss the standardization of data formats to ease the exchange of voice, text, fax, and digital network intelligence.

The NSA and GCHQ leadership held their annual Joint Management Review and recommitted themselves to working together on SIGINT missions.

In an interview, the deputy director describes his early days in the NSA's "weather shop," decrypting Soviet weather reports.

There is a U.S. signals intelligence presence at the Royal Air Force base at Digby, in the Lincolnshire countryside, where the writer, an NSA civilian, reports that there will soon be three additional positions available.

Topics at an annual meeting between the Signals Intelligence Directorate and its GCHQ counterpart included the relative paucity of GCHQ efforts in China, the need to devote sufficient resources to Russia and weapons of mass destruction in the face of counterterrorism mandates, and the need to better geolocate targets, writes GCHQ's director for signals intelligence operations.

The newly assigned chief of operations in the NSA’s London liaison office describes the London bombings on July 7, 2005 as his “baptism by fire.”

SIDtoday readers are offered a quiz on their knowledge of foreign signals intelligence agency headquarters. 

After realizing that their technologies for collecting high frequency signals were obsolete, the NSA and GCHQ established the Joint Strategic Off-Air Programme, which jointly manages all HF/VHF/UHF collection as well as updates to legacy systems.

This undated post from an NSA discussion board describes “fourth party collection” – piggybacking on another state’s computer network exploitation operation: see the Der Spiegel article The Digital Arms Race: NSA Preps America for Future Battle, 17 January 2015.

This 2009 NSA presentation describes some of the plug ins available and the way the tool relates to other NSA methods for searching internet metadata, with XKeyScore having the broadest capability: see the book No Place To Hide, 13 May 2014.