This 2010 certification from the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General asserts that procedures are in place to ensure foreign intelligence gathering stays within the boundaries of the law by targeting people “who are reasonably believed to be outside the United States.” The breadth of the authority is, however, very wide, allowing surveillance […]

This extract, part of an undated disclosure given to congress each year as required under the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, shows that the FISA Court only denied one application made by the US government over the course of 2012: see the book No Place To Hide, 13 May 2014.

This extract from the US Intelligence Community’s Congressional Budget Justification for the Fiscal Year 2013 (the “Black Budget”) provides the budget for GENIE the project “which underpins NSA/CSS’ Computer Network Operations (CNO) Endpoint capabilities conducted by the Tailored Access Operations (TAO) Group: see the Der Spiegel article The Digital Arms Race: NSA Preps America for […]

This extract from the US intelligence community’s 2013 Congressional Budget Justification shows expenditure on the Analysis of Target Systems project, which aims to defeat the encryption in commercial software and hardware: see the Intercept article iSpy: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple’s Secrets, 10 March 2015.

This April 2009 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence considers the challenges the US intelligence community may face by 2025 and suggests that the competitive advantage of US firms may need to be supported by espionage: see the Intercept article The U.S. Government’s Secret Plans to Spy for American Corporations, 5 […]

This ODNI briefing from 15 May 2007 describes the rationale for ICREACH and the scale of metadata sharing that was envisioned: see the Intercept article The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google, 25 August 2014.

This 4-page excerpt from the 2013 Black Budget describes the two elements of NSA’s Foreign Partner Access operations – RAMPART-A and WINSTSTOP – together with their funding: see the Intercept article How Secret Partners Expand NSA’s Surveillance Dragnet, 18 June 2014.

This extract from the 2013 Intelligence Community Budget Justification (“the Black Budget”) outlines the budget for speech recognition technologies: see the Intercept article The Computers are Listening: How the NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text, 5 May 2015.

These three short extracts from the 2013 Intelligence Community Budget Justification (“the Black Budget”) shows that Israel was seen as a counter-intelligence target: see the Intercept article Netanyahu’s Spying Denials Contradicted by Secret NSA Documents, 25 March 2015.

This document lists the 193 governments, intragovernmental organisations and other entities which the NSA was granted the legal authority to intercept communications “about” for foreign intelligence purposes in August 2010: see the Washington Post article Court gave NSA broad leeway in surveillance, 30 June 2014.

This extract from the 2013 Intelligence Community Budget Justification (“the Black Budget”) outlines the budget for speech recognition technologies: see the Intercept article The Computers are Listening: How the NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text, 5 May 2015.

These extracts from the 2013 Congressional Budget Justification (the “Black Budget”) describe US intelligence activity around the raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbotabat compound: see the Intercept article What the Snowden Files Say About the Osama Bin Laden Raid, 18 May 2015.

An extract from this document confirms that the NSA played a role in the assassination of US citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan: see the Intercept article The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program, 10 February 2014.

This extract from the 2013 Congressional Budget Justification for the National Intelligence Program (the Black Budget) describes the spread of MYSTIC’s “complete access” to other target counries: see the Washington Post article NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls, 18 March 2014.

This excerpt from the Black Budget explains how quantum computing development efforts fit in with NSA projects that aim to break strong encryption (Penetrating Hard Targets) and facilitate offensive operations to compromise target networks (Owning The Net or OTN): see the Washington Post article NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types […]

These extracts from the Congressional Budget Justification for the financial year 2013 show that increased funding was sought for ICREACH: see the Intercept article The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google, 25 August 2014.