But XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst. Under US law, the NSA is required to obtain an individualized Fisa warrant only if the target of their surveillance is a ‘US person’, though no such warrant is required for intercepting the communications of Americans with foreign targets.

persons, or only foreign nationals? This is where things get a little murky:

Because it’s non-U.S., this includes the content of the communications, not just the metadata:Īn NSA tool called DNI Presenter, used to read the content of stored emails, also enables an analyst using XKeyscore to read the content of Facebook chats or private messages. An analyst can monitor such Facebook chats by entering the Facebook user name and a date range into a simple search screen. Analysts can search for internet browsing activities using a wide range of information, including search terms entered by the user or the websites viewed….The XKeyscore program also allows an analyst to learn the IP addresses of every person who visits any website the analyst specifies.īut does this include U.S. It’s not clear precisely what’s available through X-KEYSCORE, but it appears to be exclusively foreign signals intelligence: phone conversations, emails, chat, etc. To solve this problem, the NSA has created a multi-tiered system that allows analysts to store “interesting” content in other databases, such as one named Pinwale which can store material for up to five years. One document explains: “At some sites, the amount of data we receive per day (20+ terabytes) can only be stored for as little as 24 hours.” Content remains on the system for only three to five days, while metadata is stored for 30 days.

The quantity of communications accessible through programs such as XKeyscore is staggeringly large….The XKeyscore system is continuously collecting so much internet data that it can be stored only for short periods of time. Glenn Greenwald’s latest disclosure from the Snowden files is an NSA program called X-KEYSCORE, which provides access to a truly vast amount of information.

Xkeyscore search engine