This Special Source Operations presentation describes the NSA’s problems with overcollection of data from email address books and buddy lists: see the Washington Post article NSA collects millions of e-mail address books globally, 14 October 2013.

This presentation gives an overview of the NSA’s programmes targeting the fibre optic cables that carry much of the world’s internet traffic. One slide gives a breakdown of which data sources form the basis of Presidential daily briefings. Another shows that the access point used to collect Yahoo and Google cloud data (MUSCULAR) is operated […]

This Boundless Informant slide shows the number of WINDSTOP records collected day-by-day between 10 December 2012 and 8 January 2013. WINDSTOP covers at least four NSA collection systems that depend on Five Eyes partners; the MUSCULAR project to intercept traffic from Google and Yahoo data centres is representated by the code DS-200B. In the given […]

An internal Special Source Operations document describes the volume of user account information obtained from Yahoo data centres amid internal NSA complaints about its limited intelligence value: see the Washington Post article NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say, 30 October 2013.

This NSA Special Source Operations presentation describes the agency’s collection of webmail address books and contact lists: see the Washington Post article NSA collects millions of e-mail address books globally, 14 October 2013.

This undated page from NSA’s internal WikiInfo describes VALIANTSURF “the coverterm for the development of Data Network Cipher (DNC) exploitation capabilities in TURMOIL”: see the Der Spiegel story Prying Eyes: Inside the NSA’s War on Internet Security, 28 December 2014.

This undated presentation from NSA’s Network Analysis Center describes agency techniques for overcoming Virtual Private Networks (VPNs): see the Der Spiegel story Prying Eyes: Inside the NSA’s War on Internet Security, 28 December 2014.

An undated NSA slide shows that the agency collects Hotmail address books. Two further slides indicate that Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger messages have been intercepted, although it is not clear that this did not happen on the public internet: see the Washington Post article Microsoft, suspecting NSA spying, to ramp up efforts to encrypt […]