Category Archives: NSA

NSA: Not tracking phones is a realmistake

November 29, 2015 | 6:13pm

WASHINGTON In the face of threats from ISIS, the National Security Agencys end Sunday to the bulk collection of phone records is a real mistake, according to the chairman...

LONDON Edward Snowden says he has offered to return to the United States and go to jail for leaking details of National Security Agency programs to intercept electronic communications...

September 29, 2015 | 2:28pm

Can you hear me now? That was the very first tweet by Edward Snowden as he finally joined Twitter on Tuesday. Using the handle @Snowden, the 32-year-old NSA whistle-blower racked...

ATLANTA Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush said Tuesday that the government should have broad surveillance powers of Americans and private technology firms should cooperate better with intelligence agencies to...

August 16, 2015 | 11:59am

WASHINGTON Under a decades-old program with the government, telecom giant AT&T in 2003 led the way on a new collection capability that the National Security Agency said amounted to...

Federal and local authorities say no charges will be filed after an investigation of a fatal shooting by National Security Agency police at Fort Meade, Md.

PARIS France summoned the U.S. ambassador to the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday following revelations by WikiLeaks that the U.S. National Security Agency eavesdropped on the past three French presidents....

WikiLeaks published documents late Tuesday it says shows the US National Security Agency eavesdropped on the last three French presidents.

BERLIN German prosecutors on Friday closed their investigation into the alleged tapping of Chancellor Angela Merkels cellphone by the U.S. National Security Agency, saying they have been unable to...

Congress this week cut back the powers of the National Security Agency a first in the post-9/11 world. A far better target wouldve been the Transportation Security Administration. The...

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Nsa | New York Post

Events :: Upcoming... < prev Dec 17 Nov 17 Oct 17 Sep 17 Aug 17 Jul 17 Jun 17 May 17 Apr 17 Mar 17 Feb 17 Jan 17 Dec 16 Nov 16 Oct 16 Sep 16 Aug 16 Jul 16 Jun 16 May 16 Apr 16 Mar 16 Feb 16 Jan 16 Dec 15 Nov 15 Oct 15 Sep 15 Aug 15 Jul 15 Jun 15 May 15 Apr 15 Mar 15 Feb 15 Jan 15 Dec 14 Nov 14 Oct 14 Sep 14 Aug 14 Jul 14 Jun 14 May 14 Apr 14 Mar 14 Feb 14 Jan 14 next > SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15* 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Recent Events... January 15: Sticky Content with Brian Walter 01/15/16, 8:30am (click above for more information) We are delighted to have Brian Walter, CSP, as our speaker on January 15th! Discover how to bring your content to life with Brians presentation on Sticky Content. December 15th: Working Session: Professional Members Only 12/15/15, 6:00pm (click above for more information) Join us on December 15th for a session on How To Build Your Personal Brand and Become A Local Celebrity Entrepreneur with Ramon Ray December 9: NSA-NYC Holiday Party! 12/9/15, 6:30pm (Click above for more information.) Please join the Leadership Team of the New York Chapter of the National Speakers Association for our annual festive holiday party. November 13: Do YOU! Finding Your Point of Distinction 11/13/15, 9:00am (click above for more information) Join us on November 13th for Jessica Pettitt Do YOU! Finding Your Points of Distinction October 28th: Working Session: Professional Members Only 10/28/15, 6:00pm (click above for more information) Join us on October 28th for a session on Pitching the Media with Jess Todtfeld, CSP October 20th Meet Up: Elevate Your Presentation Skills! 10/20/15, 6:30pm (click above for more information)Join us on Tuesday, October 20th, for: Elevate Your Presentation Skills! - 2 Hours, 2 Speakers, an Interactive Discussion and Tangible Take-a-Ways! October 16th: Sell Your Thoughts: How to Build Your Thought Leadership, Increase Your Revenue 10/16/15, 8:30am (click above for more information) We are delighted to have Neen James, CSP, as our speaker on October 16th! Discover how to leverage your ideas with Neens presentation on Sell Your Thoughts: How to Build Your Thought Leadership, Increase Your Revenue. September 18th: Creating Systems to put You Center Stage with Ruby Newell-Legner 09/18/15, 8:30am (click above for more information)Join us on September 18th as we kick-off our 2015-2016 season with Ruby Newell-Legners program on Creating Systems to put You Center Stage! August 5th: Working Session: Professional Members Only 08/5/15, 6:00pm (click above for more information) Join us on August 5th for a session on The Technology of Presentations with Trevor Perry June 24th Meet Up: NSA Sneak Peek and Navigate 06/24/15, 6:30pm (click above for more information)Join us on Wednesday, June 24th, for NSA Convention Sneak Peak and Navigate.

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National Speakers Association New York Chapter

National Security Agency has found way to replace program that collected Americans' emails in bulk; it continues to analyze social links revealed by American's email patterns, but without collecting Internet metadata within United States, and with less oversight by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. MORE

Judge Richard J Leon of United States District Court for District of Columbia orders National Security Agency to stop collecting records for an individual Verizon customer, just weeks before program is scheduled to be shut down and replaced; says program is most likely unconstitutional. MORE

European Parliament issues strongest support yet for Edward J Snowden, recognizing him as 'whistle-blower and international human rights defender'; designation is non-binding and while former National Security Agency contractor is currently in Russia, no countries in Europe have offered Snowden permanent asylum to date. MORE

Federal appeals court allows National Security Agency bulk phone records program to continue until it will end as decreed by bill passed by Congress, thereby avoiding definitive ruling on whether program is violation of Fourth Amendment's constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. MORE

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward J Snowden opens Twitter account, garnering more than 160,000 followers in single hour; opening Tweet contains joke about NSA phone surveillance. MORE

Newly declassified report on NSA surveillance program under Pres George W Bush contextualizes clash in 2004 between Bush and his attorney general, who was hospitalized at time, over program's scope and legality; bedside debate led to president retroactively authorizing collection of domestic phone records, which have since been deemed illegal. MORE

United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rules NSA may continue collecting phone records of millions of Americans until new law set to ban practice goes into effect in late November 2015. MORE

Documents provided by former National Security Agency contractor Edward J Snowden reveal that AT&T's collaboration with agency on Internet spying operations was far more extensive than that of other telecommunications companies; unique and especially productive partnership provided NSA with billions of emails as well as assistance in wiretapping of all Internet communications at United Nations headquarters. MORE

Release of 350 page document from 2010 sheds light on surveillance program established by Bush administration to counteract terrorism after September 11; call records of millions of Americans obtained by National Security Agency under secret interpretation of provision in Patriot Act was deemed illegal by appeals court ruling in early May. MORE

Obama administration announces that National Security Agency will no longer be permitted to keep old phone records used to analyze links between callers in search of terrorism suspects after Nov 29, 2015. MORE

National Security Agency sponsors dozens of free overnight and day camps around country that aim at introducing middle- and high-school-age students to cyber-security tools and techniques; camps are part of effort to reach out to potential recruits for next generation's cybersecurity workforce. MORE

American Civil Liberties Union asks federal appeals court to shut down part of National Security Agency program that collects American phone records in bulk, move that may set up conflict between regular court system and secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. MORE

WikiLeaks releases American intelligence document containing telephone numbers of high-ranking German government officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkels top aides and senior figures from previous administrations; document, dating back to 1990s, adds to controversy surrounding United States intelligence service practices. MORE

Newly leaked material by Wikileaks revisits question of when and how much spying National Security Agency did on German government and Chancellor Angela Merkel; files also cover discussions about Germany's position on Greek debt crisis. MORE

Embattled Brazilian Pres Dilma Rousseff plays down concerns about 2013 spying scandal during White House visit, saying she has accepted Pres Obama's pledge that National Security Agency's wiretapping has ended; Rousseff's visit seems focused on courting American investment as she grapples with tanking economy at home. MORE

American Civil Liberties Union says it will ask United States Court of Appeals for Second Circuit to issue injunction to halt once-secret National Security Agency program in which records of domestic phone calls were collected in bulk; NSA was given go-ahead to resume program by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and ACLU request may pit two courts against one another. MORE

Mattathias Schwartz First Words column contends word 'relevant,' when used by National Security Agency, expands to include all information gathered in bulk collection of phone records; says use of word allows spying on citizens with impunity, since no information is irrelevant. MORE

French government reacts with modulated response to information published by WikiLeaks and media groups that United States' National Security Agency spied on French presidents and other senior officials from 2016 to 2012. MORE

British intelligence documents provided by former National Security Agency contractor Edward J Snowden to The Guardian news media describe American drone strikes that killed Khadim Usamah, along with other such airstrikes and counter-terrorism efforts; documents raise possibility British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters aided American targeted strikes. MORE

WikiLeaks releases documents saying United States National Security Agency eavesdropped on last three French presidents, Francoise Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac. MORE

Harald Range, Germany's federal prosecutor, announces that he has dropped formal investigation of accusations that National Security Agency eavesdropped on cellphone owned by Chancellor Angela Merkel, citing lack of evidence. MORE

Classifed National Security Agency documents provided by Edward J Snowden indicate Obama administration, sans public notice, has expanded agency's warrantless surveillance of Americans' international internet traffic to hunt for evidence of malicious computer hacking; disclosures come at time of pernicious cyberattacks, but also of increased scrutiny of legal rights for more government surveillance. MORE

Op-Ed article by Edward J Snowden expresses satisfaction that two years after he revealed extent of National Security Agency's surveillance of American citizens, there is now wide consensus that such activities were illegal and many of them have been stopped; warns that while progress has made, right to privacy is still under threat. MORE

News Analysis; Pr
es Obama's revision of National Security Agency's phone record collection program seeks to tailor program to his own competing aims of addressing privacy concerns while preserving means of monitoring terrorist activity; in so doing, Obama has solidified his ownership of controversial program begun by predecessor George W Bush. MORE

Senate passes bill scaling back federal government's extensive surveillance of American phone records, and Pres Obama signs it; legislation signifies significant overhaul of national security policy formed after 9-11 terrorist attacks, and is rebuke to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who fought forcefully against lessening government surveillance powers. MORE

Sen Rand Paul's libertarian stance on national security issues, including his rather lonely fight against National Security Agency's surveillance of American citizens, has endeared him to supporters of his father Ron Paul during former congressman's past presidential bids; many of the elder Paul's backers have been slow to warm to Sen Rand Paul, questioning his commitment to his father's ultra libertarian ideals. MORE

Obama administration is pressing Senate not to substantially alter House-passed USA Freedom Act, given that authorizations for National Security Agency have lapsed and any changes to bill's provisions would necessarily entail lengthy negotiations that could delay agency's reinstatement. MORE

Congressional Memo; Sen Mitch McConnell, after losing battle to extend National Security Agency programs, is being forced to embrace a House-passed NSA overhaul that he fears will weaken national security. MORE

News Analysis; interviews with intelligence experts suggest that there are several available workarounds as National Security Agency grapples with temporary expiration of Patriot Act provisions that allowed it to gather phone records en masse; key aspect is 'grandfather clause' that maintains powers for any investigation that was begun before June 1, 2015; records can also be obtained by grand jury subpoena if necessary. MORE

Provisions of Patriot Act allowing government to amass phone records temporarily expires following caustic Senate session in which Sen Rand Paul blocked extension; revised edition of law, which will curtail some bulk data collection by National Security Agency, is likely to pass in coming week; developments reflect profound shift in American attitudes toward data collection since days following Sept 11 attacks. MORE

Republican Sen Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has been shunned and mocked by colleagues in his party, succeeds in temporarily blocking vote on renewal of section of Patriot Act that gives broad surveillance authority to National Security Agency. MORE

Battle in Congress over National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone records is being waged among different Republican factions, with defense hawks squaring off against libertarians and new members clashing with old; Senate has been tasked with creating passable compromise bill, feat likely to prove challenging. MORE

Pres Obama presses Senate to pass legislation known as USA Freedom Act, warning that allowing National Security Agency's domestic surveillance programs to lapse will make country more vulnerable to terrorist attack. MORE

Editorial welcomes fact that provisions within Patriot Act giving federal authorities broad surveillance powers, which led to National Security Agency's collection of bulk phone data, are set to expire; calls for thorough debate regarding such surveillance powers and underscores necessity of balancing such powers with meaningful judicial oversight. MORE

Obama administration urges Congress to reach deal on legislation governing National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone records before June 1 deadline, warning that failure to do so will leave United States vulnerable to terrorist attacks. MORE

Pres Obama issues warning to Senate about risks attendant upon lawmakers failing to renew surveillance programs authorized by USA Patriot Act; it is unlikely that lawmakers will pass extension before scheduled expiration date, which means Obama administration and National Security Agency will lack legal authority to carry out such programs for some time. MORE

Congressional leaders, with deadline looming, take unusual step of working during recess to reach agreement on changes to USA Freedom Act that would rein in National Security Agency's phone data collection authority. MORE

Obama administration is examining how expiration of three counterterrorism laws allowing government to collect telephone and other data will affect future of effort, even as bulk collection of phone records winds down; at issue is treatment of phone records already collected by government and investigations already under way; Senate remains divided on whether to continue or replace National Security Agency's phone records program. MORE

Senate's failure to advance legislation on National Security Agency reform highlights discord among Republican leaders; after failing to get extension of federal government's bulk collection of phone records program, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has found promises he made about Senates operation hard to keep. MORE

Senate rejects legislation that would revise Patriot Act to limit federal government's bulk collection of phone records; vote, and subsequent failure of short-term measure to extend program beyond June 1 expiration date, raises likelihood that government will lose access to phone records after deadline, creating security vulnerability. MORE

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward J Snowden, facing espionage charges in United States and living in exile in Russia, is speaking by video to audiences worldwide and gaining victories both in Congress and federal court; has no apparent prospect of leaving Russia soon, as prosecutors show no inclination to offer him acceptable plea bargain. MORE

News Analysis; House vote to end and replace National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone records is striking because open debate about cost of national security has been rare in 14 years since Sept 11 attacks; highlights question of where to draw line between advantages of secrecy and demands for openness in shadow of war on terror that shows no sign of abating. MORE

House of Representatives approves, 338 to 88, bill to halt National Security Agency's collection of data related to Americans' phone records under Patriot Act; vote places high pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring Senate, which is more divided on issue, into line with House ahead of June 1 deadline. MORE

Brian McFadden The Strip comic offers up variety of real-life conspiracies that American voters should be concerned about, such as current campaign financing laws, police brutality and National Security Agency spying on Americans. MORE

Federal appeals court's decision that National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone records is illegal
complicates bipartisan effort in Congress to overhaul program. MORE

United States Court of Appeals rules National Security Agency program that is systematically collecting Americans' bulk phone records is illegal; three judges say Patriot Act does not cover domestic calling records; provision is set expire June 1, and ruling is liable to ratchet up Congressional tension. MORE

Editorial applauds ruling by three-judge federal appeals panel, which determined National Security Agency's collection of Americans' phone records is illegal; holds decision is just in time as Congress is now in debate over reauthorizing section of Patriot Act that allows government to sweep records of those suspected of involvement in terrorist acts. MORE

German Chancellor Angela Merkel finds herself in midst of domestic controversy over depth and extent of country's role in European spying; 2002 agreement on intelligence sharing between Germany and United States is under duress after reports that German intelligence agency BND indulged in spying on corporations and individuals at behest of National Security Agency. MORE

Germany's foreign intelligence service, knows as BND, is being accused of spying on European companies, and possibly individuals; reports say monitoring was done at request of National Security Agency, which BND denies. MORE

News Analysis; proposal to limit bulk collection of domestic telephone data, centerpiece of legislation advancing in Congress, is meeting little opposition from National Security Agency itself; lack of pushback from the agency underscores just how dubious insiders were about the program from the start. MORE

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U.S. National Security Agency News - The New York Times

NSA Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Navy Yard are home to multiple tenant commands supporting the fleet and warfighter at home and abroad. They are located on a streamlined shore and provide an operation ready, secure shore infrastructure. Providing a high quality of life to military members and civilian staffs and quality of community developed through extensive interaction and involvement with the community are among their top priorities.

Location

700 Robbins Street, Philadelphia, PA 19111 View Larger Map

Mission and Vision

NSA Philadelphia/PNY mission is to provide an operationally ready, secure shore infrastructure built upon a streamlined shore installation management organization committed to quality of life to our military members and civilian staffs and quality of community developed through extensive interaction and involvement with the community. All of this will be attained within a safe working environment.

Tenant Commands

NSA Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Navy Yard are home to multiple commands supporting the warfighter. The major tenant commands are listed below:

NSA Philadelphia Military Reference Guide (most facility listings are for the NSA base in Northeast Philadelphia; others located where indicated)

Adverse Weather Information (Snow Line for Northeast Phila Base; 700 Robbins Ave).215-697-1115, DSN 442-1115, Toll-Free 1-888-697-1115

American Red Cross.1-877-272-7337

Auditorium (Bldg. 4).Reservations: 215-697-4606, DSN 430-4606

Ball Field Reservations.215-697-5005, DSN 442-5005

Barber Shop: Bldg. 5.215-697-3706, DSN 442-3706, Mon & Fri 0800-1300 & 1400-1600 Bldg. 1, Room 1313.215-697-5278, DSN 442-5278, Tue-Thu 0800-1300 & 1400-1600

Base Status Line.215-697-1115, DSN 442-1115, Toll-Free 1-888-697-1115

Cafeterias.see Food Service

Central Switchboard.215-697-2000, DSN 442-2000

Child Development Center (CDC)215-697-6277, DSN 442-6277 Mon-Fri 0615-1745

Club (All Hands).see Frans Hangar Bay 3

Command Duty Officer.215-688-6601

Commanding Officer, NSA Mech.717-605-5215, DSN 430-5215

Commissary (McGuire AFB, NJ)609-754-2153 x3102, DSN 650-2153 http://www.commissaries.com/stores/html/store.cfm?dodaac=HQCNEW

Common Access Card (CAC) Services (https://rapids-appointments.dmdc.osd.mil)

NSA Phila Bldg. 2C: Mon-Fri 0730-1600215-697-3783, DSN 442-3783 Navy Yard Annex Bldg. 29: Mon-Fri 0730-1600.215-897-7001, DSN 443-7001

Credit Union (Bldg. 1).215-697-3700

DEERS Assistance.1-800-538-9552

Dental Lakehurst Naval Dental Clinic.732-323-2158, DSN 624-2158 TRICARE Remote Active Duty Dental Program.1-866-984-2337

Dispatcher NSA Phila Emergency215-697-3333 Phila Navy Yard Emergency215-897-3333 NSA Phila Non-Emergency215-697-4141 Phila Navy Yard Non-Emergency215-897-4240

Educational Services (Washington, DC).202-433-2031/2032/2032/2033, DSN 288-2031/2032/2032/2033

Emergencies.3333 (Northeast Phila: 215-697-3333 / Phila Navy Yard 215-897-3333)

Environmental..215-697-5471, DSN 442-5471

Fire Dispatcher (US Navy at Philadelphia Navy Yard) Emergencies.3333 (215-897-3333) Non-Emergencies.215-897-4240

Fire Inspector.215-697-2600, DSN 442-2600

Fitness Center (Bldg. 8).215-697-2069/2042, DSN 442-2069/2042 Mon-Fri 0530-2100 Sat 0800-1800 Sun 0800-1600 Holidays 0800-1600 (except closed on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Years Day)

Fleet and Family Support Center Earle, NJ.732-866-2115, DSN 449-2115

Food Service Northeast Philadelphia (700 Robbins Ave): Bldg. 15: Dominics Mon-Fri 0630-1400.215-697-3704 Bldg. 3: Dominics Mon-Fri 0630-1400.215-697-3015 Bldg. 6: Dominics Mon-Fri 0630-1400.215-697-1336 Bldg. 9: Subway Mon-Fri 0630-1430 .215-725-3160 (FAX 215-725-3253) Philadelphia Navy Yard (South Philly)(5001 South Broad St) Bldg. 4: Food Supreme Mon-Fri 0600-1330.215-897-8254

Frans Hangar Bay 3 (All Hands Club) (Bldg. 15).215-697-2297 Tue-Fri 1600-2000

Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Hotline.1-800-788-2846

Household Goods/Personal Property Norfolk, VA.1-877-619-8596 Website: http://www.move.mil Email: HHG_MA_Counseling@navy.mil

Housing (Military)see Military Housing (PPV at McGuire/Dix)

Housing Referral Office (Bldg. 109/former NSA Community Center)215-437-9455, 215-437-9520 Mon-Fri 0800-1630

Human Resources Office (Navy HRO).215-697-2633, DSN 442-2633

Information, Tickets, & Tours (ITT)(Bldg. 15) Office.215-697-9092/5499, DSN 442-9092/5499 (Bldg. 15, M-F 0900-1630) 24/7 Hotline Info.215-697-5392, DSN 442-5392

Legal Service Office (Earle, NJ).732-866-2066 x10, DSN 449-2066 x10

Master-At-Arms.215-697-1033/2547/3586/2455, DSN 442-1033/2547/3586/2455

Medical Federal Occupational Health Nurse (Bldg. 2C).215-697-6750, DSN 442-6750 PNY Annex Occupational Health Clinic (Philadelphia Navy Yard).215-897-8147, DSN 443-8147 87th Medical Group (Joint Base McGuire/Dix/Lakehurst).1-866-377-2778 Lakehurst Naval Health Clinic.732-323-2231, DSN 624-2231

Military Housing (PPV at McGuire/Dix)609-723-4290 (http://www.mcguiredixuc.com/)

Military OneSource.1-800-342-9647

Morale, Welfare & Recreation (MWR) Office (Bldg. 15)215-697-5005, DSN 442-5005

Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).215-897-6665, DSN 443-6665

NAVFAC.see Public Works Department

Navy College Office (Groton, CT)860-694-3335, DSN 694-3335

Navy Exchange (Bldg. 5).215-697-3703, DSN 442-3703 Mon-Fri 0930-1730 Sat 0930-1500

Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society Ft. Dix, NJ609-562-4245 Groton, CT.860-694-3285, DSN 694-3285 Norfolk, VA.757-322-3234, 757-322-1171

Navy Personnel Command Emergency Coordination Center.1-877-414-5358

Notary.215-697-3700

Nurse (Federal Occupational Health)(Bldg. 2C).215-697-6750, DSN 442-6750

Officer-in-Charge (OIC).215-697-6163, DSN 442-6163

Pass and ID Office.215-697-4259, DSN 442-4259 Mon-Fri 0630-1500

Personal Property Office/Household Goods Norfolk, VA.1-877-619-8596 Website: http://www.move.mil Email: HHG_MA_Counseling@navy.mil

Personnel Support Detachment (PSD)(Washington, DC).202-685-0598/0959/0608, DSN 325-0598/0959/0608

Picnic Area Reservations.215-697-5005, DSN 442-5005

Police Dispatcher (US Navy at Philadelphia Navy Yard) Emergencies.3333 (215-897-3333) Non-Emergencies.215-897-4240

Public Affairs215-697-5995, DSN 442-5995 / 717-605-2448, DSN 430-2448

Public Works Department /NAVFAC Trouble Calls.1-866-477-7206 Public Works Officer.215-897-3250, DSN 443-3250 Asst Public Works Officer for NE Phila.215-697-6138, DSN 442-6138 Asst Public Works Officer for PNY.215-897-3663, DSN 443-3663

Safety Office.215-697-1163/9471/9091, DSN 442-1163/9471/9091

Security Dispatcher (Northeast Philadelphia, 700 Robbins Ave) Emergencies3333 (215-697-3333) Non-Emergencies215-697-4141

Security Director215-697-6692, DSN 442-6692

SERVMART (LCI)(Bldg. 27D).215-745-8550 (0730-1600)

Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) Victim Advocate 24/7267-693-9104

Site Manager (NSA).215-697-6458, DSN 442-6458

Site Manager (Phila Navy Yard Annex).215-897-6804, DSN 443-6804

Swimming Pool Indoor.The Aquatic & Fitness Center, 3600 Grant Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19114. Phone 215-677-0400. The indoor pool and all other facilities within this location are available to all active duty military stationed aboard NSA Philadelphia/PNY Annex at no cost. Military ID is all that is required to enter the center. http://www.afcfitness.com/philadelphia-index.php

Training Officer717-605-5713, DSN 430-5713

Transportation Incentive Program (TIP)215-697-2683, DSN 442-2683

TRICARE.1-877-TRICARE

Uniform Orders (Navy & Marine Corps).24/7: 1-800-368-4088 https://www.mynavyexchange.com/uniform/wg_shop_online.html

Visitor Control.215-697-4259, DSN 442-4259

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Naval Support Activity Philadelphia - Military Bases

Homeadmin2015-12-15T17:22:13+00:00 Our Next Meeting

Become a Fierce Competitor Online. Frustrated with your website? Want to squash speaking competitors? Online marketing is a dog-eat-dog world and competition to rank on page one of search results is fierce. But, you can turn this around now!

Whats Your Score? With such fierce competition, find out how you measure up. Come prepared by running a MarketingGrader.com report on your site vs. a competitors. Bring your rank with you to the program and find out what you can do quickly to improve Findability and get more bookings from the web.

Join us to:

Guessing is expensive! Uncover competitive strategies and leverage real insights to dramatically improve your Findability. Gain a massive competitive edge when you understand SEO.

Go even more in depth with Heather- sign up for the workshop after the luncheon!

Heather Lutzes web marketing career started working at Yahoo! for seven years. She presented at seven Tony Robbins International Business Mastery Events and founded and ran a multi-million dollar SEM agency for thirteen years. Heather is the author of three web marketing books: 1) The Findability Formula, 2) Thumbonomics and 3) Marketing Espionage due out winter 2016.

Currently, Heather is a speaker and CEO of the Findability Group (Findability.com) which includes Findability University, coaching and training frustrated CEOs, business owners and their teams to improve their online presence and get found faster.

Download the Findability App from the App Store or GooglePlay to gain access to free Findability Tools for increased online revenue, your Findability Score, the Findability Diagnostic Survey, and so much more.

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NSA Austin

Aboutadmin2014-12-24T16:50:45+00:00 The Austin chapter of the National Speakers Association is the premier local destination for professional speakers and those who want to learn the craft. We present educational programming on marketing, sales, content development and other critical skills for speakers, and we also provide a place where speakers can learn from one another. We look forward to welcoming you to NSA Austin. Vision:

To make NSA Austin the go-to organization for professional speakers as well as one of the most respected and dynamic professional organizations in Central Texas.

Speakers who have presented have included Sam Horn, David Newman, Jill Griffin, Patrick Henry, Neen James, Vickie Sullivan, Dave Lieber and many others.

We have even more excellent programming in store. We encourage you to get to know NSA Austin and see if this is a good fit for you as you continue, or embark on, your own professional speaking journey.

For more information about our current programming, click here to see whats on tap for 2015!

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NSA Austin About

The best keynote speakers and trainers in the New Orleans areas belong to the National Speakers Association of New Orleans, also known as NSA New Orleans.

The goal of NSA New Orleans is to advance the art and business skills of experts who are hired to speak and present at conferences, conventions and corporate events.

This website serves as a resource to meeting planners who wish to hire expert speakers and trainers for conference keynote speeches, conference breakout sessions or training for corporate meetings and for individual companies. It is also a resource for members who are active professional speakers, as well as individuals who aspire to be a professional speaker and earn a living as a speaker who shares his or her expertise with audiences in New Orleans, across the United States and around the world.

Walter Bond CSP & CPAE who has taken the speaking business by storm is headed our way. After being on the speaking circuit for a short period of time Walter Bond has already graced the main stage at NSA. He is now making his rounds teaching at various NSA chapter events sharing his speaking secrets. Bond says it is all in the fundamentals. I learned in the NBA how to become a real pro. There is difference between a professional speaker and a professional who speaks and Bond aims to show us the difference. After this powerful session on the basics you will be ready to take your business to the next level.

You will learn powerful insights on:

For nearly two decades, Walter Bond has been a premiere expert on peak performance. Walters mastery in two different global industries has made him an authority on peak performance. Walter has delivered his entertaining and dynamic message to companies and associations throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Europe. Clients include Accenture, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, The Dwyer Group, Allianz, Amway, GNC, Hilton, Medtronic, UPS Store, Radio Shack, Red Robin and many national associations.

Walters passion for personal development has been anchored by his professional basketball career. Although a reserve throughout his college basketball career at the University of Minnesota, Bond miraculously enjoyed an eight year career while spending time as a shooting guard for teams such as the Dallas Mavericks, Utah Jazz and Detroit Pistons. This is where he learned peak performance truths that he has also applied to a wildly successful speaking career.

Bonds college basketball career did not say NBA at all. Only hard work, dedication and commitment got him there. That mentality is what he wants to share with your audience. Whether its a new product launch, hitting sales goals, gelling as a team Bond is passionate about sharing his 31 Truths to Boost Peak Performance.

In 2013, Walter appeared as the host of The Food Networks show Giving You The Business. Walter was chosen over numerous candidates because of his infectious personality and franchise business experience. Episodes featured restaurants such as Saladworks, Famous Familia and Jersey Mikes.

Walters program is not just another session. Treat your audience to a memorable, impactful and educational experience. Walter is sure to make you look good.

Communication techniques to improve ones personal, financial, business and emotional life understanding the psychology of happiness.

40 years ago and over a half million consultations later has polished Glenn Michael Milliet into a communications expect sought often and respected throughout the beauty and fashion industry for developing, defining and refining the art of Happiness Selling through the use of time tested and power communication techniques.

Glenn Michael Milliet is now expanding his High Touch, High Energy, High Sales communication seminars for businesses and individuals that want and desire increased sales and long term happy client relationships.

In addition to How to be a Powerful Communicator, Glenns programs include:

Metrics can be like magic. Have you wondered: how can the reports and analytics of digital marketing give you the insight and key info you need to succeed? This seminar will take you step-by-step through the amazing data generated by some of the key online marketing tools and give you tips on how to use it.

Kathryn Cariglino has been a pioneer in the world of women in business since starting her Womens Yellow Pages business in 1989. In 1993 she founded one of the earliest, continuously contracted SBA Womens Business Centers based in Mobile, Alabama. Now retired, she does marketing consulting and serves as the Authorized Local Expert for the Constant Contact Company. The name of her business reflects her own philosophy of life and business: Never Give Up!

I owe much of my success to NSA, and I am proud to serve as the New Orleans Chapter President this year. If you are interested in professional speaking, or marketing yourself as an expert, you cannot afford not to check out the National Speakers Association. Please come visit us and see for yourself. Kevin Gilheany

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The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence organization of the United States government, responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). NSA is concurrently charged with protection of U.S. government communications and information systems against penetration and network warfare.[8][9] Although many of NSA's programs rely on "passive" electronic collection, the agency is authorized to accomplish its mission through active clandestine means,[10] among which are physically bugging electronic systems[11] and allegedly engaging in sabotage through subversive software.[12][13] Moreover, NSA maintains physical presence in a large number of countries across the globe, where its Special Collection Service (SCS) inserts eavesdropping devices in difficult-to-reach places. SCS collection tactics allegedly encompass "close surveillance, burglary, wiretapping, breaking and entering".[14][15]

Unlike the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), both of which specialize primarily in foreign human espionage, NSA does not unilaterally conduct human-source intelligence gathering, despite often being portrayed so in popular culture. Instead, NSA is entrusted with assistance to and coordination of SIGINT elements at other government organizations, which are prevented by law from engaging in such activities without the approval of the NSA via the Defense Secretary.[16] As part of these streamlining responsibilities, the agency has a co-located organization called the Central Security Service (CSS), which was created to facilitate cooperation between NSA and other U.S. military cryptanalysis components. Additionally, the NSA Director simultaneously serves as the Commander of the United States Cyber Command and as Chief of the Central Security Service.

Originating as a unit to decipher coded communications in World War II, it was officially formed as the NSA by Harry S. Truman in 1952. Since then, it has become one of the largest of U.S. intelligence organizations in terms of personnel and budget,[6][17] operating as part of the Department of Defense and simultaneously reporting to the Director of National Intelligence.

NSA surveillance has been a matter of political controversy on several occasions, such as its spying on anti-Vietnam war leaders or economic espionage. In 2013, the extent of the NSA's secret surveillance programs was revealed to the public by Edward Snowden. According to the leaked documents, the NSA intercepts the communications of over a billion people worldwide and tracks the movement of hundreds of millions of people using cellphones. Internationally, research has pointed to the NSA's ability to surveil the domestic internet traffic of foreign countries through "boomerang routing".[18]

The origins of the National Security Agency can be traced back to April 28, 1917, three weeks after the U.S. Congress declared war on Germany in World War I. A code and cipher decryption unit was established as the Cable and Telegraph Section which was also known as the Cipher Bureau and Military Intelligence Branch, Section 8 (MI-8). It was headquartered in Washington, D.C. and was part of the war effort under the executive branch without direct Congressional authorization. During the course of the war it was relocated in the army's organizational chart several times. On July 5, 1917, Herbert O. Yardley was assigned to head the unit. At that point, the unit consisted of Yardley and two civilian clerks. It absorbed the navy's cryptoanalysis functions in July 1918. World War I ended on November 11, 1918, and MI-8 moved to New York City on May 20, 1919, where it continued intelligence activities as the Code Compilation Company under the direction of Yardley.[19][20]

MI-8 also operated the so-called "Black Chamber".[22] The Black Chamber was located on East 37th Street in Manhattan. Its purpose was to crack the communications codes of foreign governments. Jointly supported by the State Department and the War Department, the chamber persuaded Western Union, the largest U.S. telegram company, to allow government officials to monitor private communications passing through the company's wires.[23]

Other "Black Chambers" were also found in Europe. They were established by the French and British governments to read the letters of targeted individuals, employing a variety of techniques to surreptitiously open, copy, and reseal correspondence before forwarding it to unsuspecting recipients.[24]

Despite the American Black Chamber's initial successes, it was shut down in 1929 by U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, who defended his decision by stating: "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail".[21]

During World War II, the Signal Security Agency (SSA) was created to intercept and decipher the communications of the Axis powers.[25] When the war ended, the SSA was reorganized as the Army Security Agency (ASA), and it was placed under the leadership of the Director of Military Intelligence.[25]

On May 20, 1949, all cryptologic activities were centralized under a national organization called the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA).[25] This organization was originally established within the U.S. Department of Defense under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.[26] The AFSA was tasked to direct Department of Defense communications and electronic intelligence activities, except those of U.S. military intelligence units.[26] However, the AFSA was unable to centralize communications intelligence and failed to coordinate with civilian agencies that shared its interests such as the Department of State, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).[26] In December 1951, President Harry S. Truman ordered a panel to investigate how AFSA had failed to achieve its goals. The results of the investigation led to improvements and its redesignation as the National Security Agency.[27]

The agency was formally established by Truman in a memorandum of October 24, 1952, that revised National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 9.[28] Since President Truman's memo was a classified document,[28] the existence of the NSA was not known to the public at that time. Due to its ultra-secrecy the U.S. intelligence community referred to the NSA as "No Such Agency".[29]

In the 1960s, the NSA played a key role in expanding America's commitment to the Vietnam War by providing evidence of a North Vietnamese attack on the American destroyer USSMaddox during the Gulf of Tonkin incident.[30]

A secret operation code-named "MINARET" was set up by the NSA to monitor the phone communications of Senators Frank Church and Howard Baker, as well as major civil rights leaders including Dr. Martin Luther King, and prominent U.S. journalists and athletes who criticized the Vietnam War.[31] However the project turned out to be controversial, and an internal review by the NSA concluded that its Minaret program was "disreputable if not outright illegal."[31]

In the aftermath of the Watergate Scandal, a congressional hearing in 1975 led by Sen. Frank Church[32] revealed that the NSA, in collaboration with Britain's SIGINT intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), had routinely intercepted the international communications of prominent anti-Vietnam war leaders such as Jane Fonda and Dr. Benjamin Spock.[33] Following the resignation of President Richard Nixon, there were several investigations of suspected misuse of FBI, CIA and NSA facilities.[34] Senator Frank Church uncovered previously unknown activity,[34] such as a CIA plot (ordered by the administration of President John F. Kennedy) to assassinate Fidel Castro.[35] The investigation also uncovered NSA's wiretaps on targeted American citizens.[36]

After the Church Committee hearings, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 was passed into law. This was designed to limit the practice of mass surveillance in the United States.[34]

In 1986, the NSA intercepted the communications of the Libyan government during the immediate aftermath of the Berlin discotheque bombing. The White House asserted that the NSA interception had provided "irrefutable" evidence that Libya was behind the bombing, which U.S. President Ronald Reagan cited as a justification for the 1986 United States bombing of Libya.[37][38]

In 1999, a multi-year investigation by the European Parliament highlighted the NSA's role in economic espionage in a report entitled 'Development of Surveillance Technology and Risk of Abuse of Economic Information'.[39] That year, the NSA founded the NSA Hall of Honor, a memorial at the National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Maryland.[40] The memorial is a, "tribute to the pioneers and heroes who have made significant and long-lasting contributions to American cryptology".[40] NSA employees must be retired for more than fifteen years to qualify for the memorial.[40]

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the NSA created new IT systems to deal with the flood of information from new technologies like the internet and cellphones. ThinThread contained advanced data mining capabilities. It also had a 'privacy mechanism'; surveillance was stored encrypted; decryption required a warrant. The research done under this program may have contributed to the technology used in later systems. ThinThread was cancelled when Michael Hayden chose Trailblazer, which did not include ThinThread's privacy system.[42]

Trailblazer Project ramped up in 2002. SAIC, Boeing, CSC, IBM, and Litton worked on it. Some NSA whistleblowers complained internally about major problems surrounding Trailblazer. This led to investigations by Congress and the NSA and DoD Inspectors General. The project was cancelled in early 2004; it was late, over budget, and didn't do what it was supposed to do. The Baltimore Sun ran articles about this in 200607. The government then raided the whistleblowers' houses. One of them, Thomas Drake, was charged with violating 18 U.S.C.793(e) in 2010 in an unusual use of espionage law. He and his defenders claim that he was actually being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project. In 2011, all 10 original charges against Drake were dropped.[43][44]

Turbulence started in 2005. It was developed in small, inexpensive 'test' pieces rather than one grand plan like Trailblazer. It also included offensive cyber-warfare capabilities, like injecting malware into remote computers. Congress criticized Turbulence in 2007 for having similar bureaucratic problems as Trailblazer.[44] It was to be a realization of information processing at higher speeds in cyberspace.[45]

The massive extent of the NSA's spying, both foreign and domestic, was revealed to the public in a series of detailed disclosures of internal NSA documents beginning in June 2013. Most of the disclosures were leaked by former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden.

It was revealed that the NSA intercepts telephone and internet communications of over a billion people worldwide, seeking information on terrorism as well as foreign politics, economics[46] and "commercial secrets".[47] In a declassified document it was revealed that 17,835 phone lines were on an improperly permitted "alert list" from 2006 to 2009 in breach of compliance, which tagged these phone lines for daily monitoring.[48][49][50] Eleven percent of these monitored phone lines met the agency's legal standard for "reasonably articulable suspicion"(RAS).[48][51]

A dedicated unit of the NSA locates targets for the CIA for extrajudicial assassination in the Middle East.[52] The NSA has also spied extensively on the European Union, the United Nations and numerous governments including allies and trading partners in Europe, South America and Asia.[53][54]

The NSA tracks the locations of hundreds of millions of cellphones per day, allowing them to map people's movements and relationships in detail.[55] It reportedly has access to all communications made via Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, AOL, Skype, Apple and Paltalk,[56] and collects hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal email and instant messaging accounts each year.[57] It has also managed to weaken much of the encryption used on the Internet (by collaborating with, coercing or otherwise infiltrating numerous technology companies), so that the majority of Internet privacy is now vulnerable to the NSA and other attackers.[58][59]

Domestically, the NSA collects and stores metadata records of phone calls,[60] including over 120 million US Verizon subscribers[61] as well as internet communications,[56] relying on a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act whereby the entirety of US communications may be considered "relevant" to a terrorism investigation if it is expected that even a tiny minority may relate to terrorism.[62] The NSA supplies foreign intercepts to the DEA, IRS and other law enforcement agencies, who use these to initiate criminal investigations. Federal agents are then instructed to "recreate" the investigative trail via parallel construction.[63]

The NSA also spies on influential Muslims to obtain information that could be used to discredit them, such as their use of pornography. The targets, both domestic and abroad, are not suspected of any crime but hold religious or political views deemed "radical" by the NSA.[64]

According to a report in The Washington Post in July 2014, relying on information furnished by Snowden, 90% of those placed under surveillance in the U.S. are ordinary Americans, and are not the intended targets. The newspaper said it had examined documents including emails, message texts, and online accounts, that support the claim.[65]

Despite President Obama's claims that these programs have congressional oversight, members of Congress were unaware of the existence of these NSA programs or the secret interpretation of the Patriot Act, and have consistently been denied access to basic information about them.[66] Obama has also claimed that there are legal checks in place to prevent inappropriate access of data and that there have been no examples of abuse;[67] however, the secret FISC court charged with regulating the NSA's activities is, according to its chief judge, incapable of investigating or verifying how often the NSA breaks even its own secret rules.[68] It has since been reported that the NSA violated its own rules on data access thousands of times a year, many of these violations involving large-scale data interceptions;[69] and that NSA officers have even used data intercepts to spy on love interests.[70] The NSA has "generally disregarded the special rules for disseminating United States person information" by illegally sharing its intercepts with other law enforcement agencies.[71] A March 2009 opinion of the FISC court, released by court order, states that protocols restricting data queries had been "so frequently and systemically violated that it can be fairly said that this critical element of the overall ... regime has never functioned effectively."[72][73] In 2011 the same court noted that the "volume and nature" of the NSA's bulk foreign internet intercepts was "fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe".[71] Email contact lists (including those of US citizens) are collected at numerous foreign locations to work around the illegality of doing so on US soil.[57]

Legal opinions on the NSA's bulk collection program have differed. In mid-December 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled that the "almost-Orwellian" program likely violates the Constitution, and wrote, "I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary invasion' than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval. Surely, such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment. Indeed, I have little doubt that the author of our Constitution, James Madison, who cautioned us to beware 'the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power,' would be aghast."[74]

Later that month, U.S. District Judge William Pauley ruled that the NSA's collection of telephone records is legal and valuable in the fight against terrorism. In his opinion, he wrote, "a bulk telephony metadata collection program [is] a wide net that could find and isolate gossamer contacts among suspected terrorists in an ocean of seemingly disconnected data" and noted that a similar collection of data prior to 9/11 might have prevented the attack.[75]

An October 2014 United Nations report condemned mass surveillance by the United States and other countries as violating multiple international treaties and conventions that guarantee core privacy rights.[76]

On March 20, 2013 the Director of National Intelligence, Lieutenant General James Clapper, testified before Congress that the NSA does not wittingly collect any kind of data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans, but he retracted this in June after details of the PRISM program were published, and stated instead that meta-data of phone and internet traffic are collected, but no actual message contents.[77] This was corroborated by the NSA Director, General Keith Alexander, before it was revealed that the XKeyscore program collects the contents of millions of emails from US citizens without warrant, as well as "nearly everything a user does on the Internet". Alexander later admitted that "content" is collected, but stated that it is simply stored and never analyzed or searched unless there is "a nexus to al-Qaida or other terrorist groups".[67]

Regarding the necessity of these NSA programs, Alexander stated on June 27 that the NSA's bulk phone and Internet intercepts had been instrumental in preventing 54 terrorist "events", including 13 in the US, and in all but one of these cases had provided the initial tip to "unravel the threat stream".[78] On July 31 NSA Deputy Director John Inglis conceded to the Senate that these intercepts had not been vital in stopping any terrorist attacks, but were "close" to vital in identifying and convicting four San Diego men for sending US$8,930 to Al-Shabaab, a militia that conducts terrorism in Somalia.[79][80][81]

The U.S. government has aggressively sought to dismiss and challenge Fourth Amendment cases raised against it, and has granted retroactive immunity to ISPs and telecoms participating in domestic surveillance.[82][83] The U.S. military has acknowledged blocking access to parts of The Guardian website for thousands of defense personnel across the country,[84][85] and blocking the entire Guardian website for personnel stationed throughout Afghanistan, the Middle East, and South Asia.[86]

The NSA is led by the Director of the National Security Agency (DIRNSA), who also serves as Chief of the Central Security Service (CHCSS) and Commander of the United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) and is the highest-ranking military official of these organizations. He is assisted by a Deputy Director, who is the highest-ranking civilian within the NSA/CSS.

NSA also has an Inspector General, head of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), a General Counsel, head of the Office of the General Counsel (OGC) and a Director of Compliance, who is head of the Office of the Director of Compliance (ODOC).[87]

Unlike other intelligence organizations such as CIA or DIA, NSA has always been particularly reticent concerning its internal organizational structure.

As of the mid-1990s, the National Security Agency was organized into five Directorates:

Each of these directorates consisted of several groups or elements, designated by a letter. There were for example the A Group, which was responsible for all SIGINT operations against the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and G Group, which was responsible for SIGINT related to all non-communist countries. These groups were divided in units designated by an additional number, like unit A5 for breaking Soviet codes, and G6, being the office for the Middle East, North Africa, Cuba, Central and South America.[89][90]

As of 2013[update], NSA has about a dozen directorates, which are designated by a letter, although not all of them are publicly known. The directorates are divided in divisions and units starting with the letter of the parent directorate, followed by a number for the division, the sub-unit or a sub-sub-unit.

The main elements of the organizational structure of the NSA are:[91]

In the year 2000, a leadership team was formed, consisting of the Director, the Deputy Director and the Directors of the Signals Intelligence (SID), the Information Assurance (IAD) and the Technical Directorate (TD). The chiefs of other main NSA divisions became associate directors of the senior leadership team.[99]

After president George W. Bush initiated the President's Surveillance Program (PSP) in 2001, the NSA created a 24-hour Metadata Analysis Center (MAC), followed in 2004 by the Advanced Analysis Division (AAD), with the mission of analyzing content, internet metadata and telephone metadata. Both units were part of the Signals Intelligence Directorate.[100]

The NSA maintains at least two watch centers:

The number of NSA employees is officially classified[4] but there are several sources providing estimates. In 1961, NSA had 59,000 military and civilian employees, which grew to 93,067 in 1969, of which 19,300 worked at the headquarters at Fort Meade. In the early 1980s NSA had roughly 50,000 military and civilian personnel. By 1989 this number had grown again to 75,000, of which 25,000 worked at the NSA headquarters. Between 1990 and 1995 the NSA's budget and workforce were cut by one third, which led to a substantial loss of experience.[103]

In 2012, the NSA said more than 30,000 employees worked at Ft. Meade and other facilities.[2] In 2012, John C. Inglis, the deputy director, said that the total number of NSA employees is "somewhere between 37,000 and one billion" as a joke,[4] and stated that the agency is "probably the biggest employer of introverts."[4] In 2013 Der Spiegel stated that the NSA had 40,000 employees.[5] More widely, it has been described as the world's largest single employer of mathematicians.[104] Some NSA employees form part of the workforce of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency that provides the NSA with satellite signals intelligence.

As of 2013 about 1,000 system administrators work for the NSA.[105]

The NSA received criticism early on in 1960 after two agents had defected to the Soviet Union. Investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee and a special subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee revealed severe cases of ignorance in personnel security regulations, prompting the former personnel director and the director of security to step down and leading to the adoption of stricter security practices.[106] Nonetheless, security breaches reoccurred only a year later when in an issue of Izvestia of July 23, 1963, a former NSA employee published several cryptologic secrets.

The very same day, an NSA clerk-messenger committed suicide as ongoing investigations disclosed that he had sold secret information to the Soviets on a regular basis. The reluctance of Congressional houses to look into these affairs had prompted a journalist to write "If a similar series of tragic blunders occurred in any ordinary agency of Government an aroused public would insist that those responsible be officially censured, demoted, or fired." David Kahn criticized the NSA's tactics of concealing its doings as smug and the Congress' blind faith in the agency's right-doing as shortsighted, and pointed out the necessity of surveillance by the Congress to prevent abuse of power.[106]

Edward Snowden's leaking of PRISM in 2013 caused the NSA to institute a "two-man rule" where two system administrators are required to be present when one accesses certain sensitive information.[105] Snowden claims he suggested such a rule in 2009.[107]

The NSA conducts polygraph tests of employees. For new employees, the tests are meant to discover enemy spies who are applying to the NSA and to uncover any information that could make an applicant pliant to coercion.[108] As part of the latter, historically EPQs or "embarrassing personal questions" about sexual behavior had been included in the NSA polygraph.[108] The NSA also conducts five-year periodic reinvestigation polygraphs of employees, focusing on counterintelligence programs. In addition the NSA conducts aperiodic polygraph investigations in order to find spies and leakers; those who refuse to take them may receive "termination of employment", according to a 1982 memorandum from the director of the NSA.[109]

There are also "special access examination" polygraphs for employees who wish to work in highly sensitive areas, and those polygraphs cover counterintelligence questions and some questions about behavior.[109] NSA's brochure states that the average test length is between two and four hours.[110] A 1983 report of the Office of Technology Assessment stated that "It appears that the NSA [National Security Agency] (and possibly CIA) use the polygraph not to determine deception or truthfulness per se, but as a technique of interrogation to encourage admissions."[111] Sometimes applicants in the polygraph process confess to committing felonies such as murder, rape, and selling of illegal drugs. Between 1974 and 1979, of the 20,511 job applicants who took polygraph tests, 695 (3.4%) confessed to previous felony crimes; almost all of those crimes had been undetected.[108]

In 2010 the NSA produced a video explaining its polygraph process.[112] The video, ten minutes long, is titled "The Truth About the Polygraph" and was posted to the website of the Defense Security Service. Jeff Stein of The Washington Post said that the video portrays "various applicants, or actors playing them it's not clear describing everything bad they had heard about the test, the implication being that none of it is true."[113] AntiPolygraph.org argues that the NSA-produced video omits some information about the polygraph process; it produced a video responding to the NSA video.[112] George Maschke, the founder of the website, accused the NSA polygraph video of being "Orwellian".[113]

After Edward Snowden revealed his identity in 2013, the NSA began requiring polygraphing of employees once per quarter.[114]

The number of exemptions from legal requirements has been criticized. When in 1964 the Congress was hearing a bill giving the director of the NSA the power to fire at will any employee, the Washington Post wrote: "This is the very definition of arbitrariness. It means that an employee could be discharged and disgraced on the basis of anonymous allegations without the slightest opportunity to defend himself." Yet, the bill was accepted by an overwhelming majority.[106]

The heraldic insignia of NSA consists of an eagle inside a circle, grasping a key in its talons.[115] The eagle represents the agency's national mission.[115] Its breast features a shield with bands of red and white, taken from the Great Seal of the United States and representing Congress.[115] The key is taken from the emblem of Saint Peter and represents security.[115]

When the NSA was created, the agency had no emblem and used that of the Department of Defense.[116] The agency adopted its first of two emblems in 1963.[116] The current NSA insignia has been in use since 1965, when then-Director, LTG Marshall S. Carter (USA) ordered the creation of a device to represent the agency.[117]

The NSA's flag consists of the agency's seal on a light blue background.

Crews associated with NSA missions have been involved in a number of dangerous and deadly situations.[118] The USS Liberty incident in 1967 and USS Pueblo incident in 1968 are examples of the losses endured during the Cold War.[118]

The National Security Agency/Central Security Service Cryptologic Memorial honors and remembers the fallen personnel, both military and civilian, of these intelligence missions.[119] It is made of black granite, and has 171 names carved into it, as of 2013[update] .[119] It is located at NSA headquarters. A tradition of declassifying the stories of the fallen was begun in 2001.[119]

NSANet stands for National Security Agency Network and is the official NSA intranet.[120] It is a classified network,[121] for information up to the level of TS/SCI[122] to support the use and sharing of intelligence data between NSA and the signals intelligence agencies of the four other nations of the Five Eyes partnership. The management of NSANet has been delegated to the Central Security Service Texas (CSSTEXAS).[123]

NSANet is a highly secured computer network consisting of fiber-optic and satellite communication channels which are almost completely separated from the public internet. The network allows NSA personnel and civilian and military intelligence analysts anywhere in the world to have access to the agency's systems and databases. This access is tightly controlled and monitored. For example, every keystroke is logged, activities are audited at random and downloading and printing of documents from NSANet are recorded.[124]

In 1998, NSANet, along with NIPRNET and SIPRNET, had "significant problems with poor search capabilities, unorganized data and old information".[125] In 2004, the network was reported to have used over twenty commercial off-the-shelf operating systems.[126] Some universities that do highly sensitive research are allowed to connect to it.[127]

The thousands of Top Secret internal NSA documents that were taken by Edward Snowden in 2013 were stored in "a file-sharing location on the NSA's intranet site" so they could easily be read online by NSA personnel. Everyone with a TS/SCI-clearance had access to these documents and as a system administrator, Snowden was responsible for moving accidentally misplaced highly sensitive documents to more secure storage locations.[128]

The DoD Computer Security Center was founded in 1981 and renamed the National Computer Security Center (NCSC) in 1985. NCSC was responsible for computer security throughout the federal government.[129] NCSC was part of NSA,[130] and during the late 1980s and the 1990s, NSA and NCSC published Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria in a six-foot high Rainbow Series of books that detailed trusted computing and network platform specifications.[131] The Rainbow books were replaced by the Common Criteria, however, in the early 2000s.[131]

On July 18, 2013, Greenwald said that Snowden held "detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do", thereby sparking fresh controversy.[132]

Headquarters for the National Security Agency is located at 39632N 764617W / 39.10889N 76.77139W / 39.10889; -76.77139 in Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, although it is separate from other compounds and agencies that are based within this same military installation. Ft. Meade is about 20mi (32km) southwest of Baltimore,[133] and 25mi (40km) northeast of Washington, DC.[134] The NSA has its own exit off Maryland Route 295 South labeled "NSA Employees Only".[135][136] The exit may only be used by people with the proper clearances, and security vehicles parked along the road guard the entrance.[137]

NSA is the largest employer in the U.S. state of Maryland, and two-thirds of its personnel work at Ft. Meade.[138] Built on 350 acres (140ha; 0.55sqmi)[139] of Ft. Meade's 5,000 acres (2,000ha; 7.8sqmi),[140] the site has 1,300 buildings and an estimated 18,000 parking spaces.[134][141]

The main NSA headquarters and operations building is what James Bamford, author of Body of Secrets, describes as "a modern boxy structure" that appears similar to "any stylish office building."[142] The building is covered with one-way dark glass, which is lined with copper shielding in order to prevent espionage by trapping in signals and sounds.[142] It contains 3,000,000 square feet (280,000m2), or more than 68 acres (28ha), of floor space; Bamford said that the U.S. Capitol "could easily fit inside it four times over."[142]

The facility has over 100 watchposts,[143] one of them being the visitor control center, a two-story area that serves as the entrance.[142] At the entrance, a white pentagonal structure,[144] visitor badges are issued to visitors and security clearances of employees are checked.[145] The visitor center includes a painting of the NSA seal.[144]

The OPS2A building, the tallest building in the NSA complex and the location of much of the agency's operations directorate, is accessible from the visitor center. Bamford described it as a "dark glass Rubik's Cube".[146] The facility's "red corridor" houses non-security operations such as concessions and the drug store. The name refers to the "red badge" which is worn by someone without a security clearance. The NSA headquarters includes a cafeteria, a credit union, ticket counters for airlines and entertainment, a barbershop, and a bank.[144] NSA headquarters has its own post office, fire department, and police force.[147][148][149]

The employees at the NSA headquarters reside in various places in the Baltimore-Washington area, including Annapolis, Baltimore, and Columbia in Maryland and the District of Columbia, including the Georgetown community.[150]

Following a major power outage in 2000, in 2003 and in follow-ups through 2007, The Baltimore Sun reported that the NSA was at risk of electrical overload because of insufficient internal electrical infrastructure at Fort Meade to support the amount of equipment being installed. This problem was apparently recognized in the 1990s but not made a priority, and "now the agency's ability to keep its operations going is threatened."[151]

Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE, now Constellation Energy) provided NSA with 65 to 75 megawatts at Ft. Meade in 2007, and expected that an increase of 10 to 15 megawatts would be needed later that year.[152] In 2011, NSA at Ft. Meade was Maryland's largest consumer of power.[138] In 2007, as BGE's largest customer, NSA bought as much electricity as Annapolis, the capital city of Maryland.[151]

One estimate put the potential for power consumption by the new Utah Data Center at $40million per year.[153]

When the agency was established, its headquarters and cryptographic center were in the Naval Security Station in Washington, D.C.. The COMINT functions were located in Arlington Hall in Northern Virginia, which served as the headquarters of the U.S. Army's cryptographic operations.[154] Because the Soviet Union had detonated a nuclear bomb and because the facilities were crowded, the federal government wanted to move several agencies, including the AFSA/NSA. A planning committee considered Fort Knox, but Fort Meade, Maryland, was ultimately chosen as NSA headquarters because it was far enough away from Washington, D.C. in case of a nuclear strike and was close enough so its employees would not have to move their families.[155]

Construction of additional buildings began after the agency occupied buildings at Ft. Meade in the late 1950s, which they soon outgrew.[155] In 1963 the new headquarters building, nine stories tall, opened. NSA workers referred to the building as the "Headquarters Building" and since the NSA management occupied the top floor, workers used "Ninth Floor" to refer to their leaders.[156] COMSEC remained in Washington, D.C., until its new building was completed in 1968.[155] In September 1986, the Operations 2A and 2B buildings, both copper-shielded to prevent eavesdropping, opened with a dedication by President Ronald Reagan.[157] The four NSA buildings became known as the "Big Four."[157] The NSA director moved to 2B when it opened.[157]

On March 30, 2015, shortly before 9am, a stolen sports utility vehicle approached an NSA police vehicle blocking the road near the gate of Fort Meade, after it was told to leave the area. NSA officers fired on the SUV, killing the 27-year-old driver, Ricky Hall (a transgender person also known as Mya), and seriously injuring his friend, 20-year-old Kevin Fleming. An NSA officer's arm was injured when Hall subsequently crashed into his vehicle.[158][159]

The two, dressed in women's clothing after a night of partying at a motel with the man they'd stolen the SUV from that morning, "attempted to drive a vehicle into the National Security Agency portion of the installation without authorization", according to an NSA statement.[160] The NSA is investigating the incident, with help from the FBI. FBI spokeswoman Amy Thoreson said the incident is not believed to be related to terrorism.[161]

An anonymous police official told The Washington Post, "This was not a deliberate attempt to breach the security of NSA. This was not a planned attack." The two are believed to have made a wrong turn off the highway, while fleeing from the motel after stealing the vehicle. A small amount of cocaine was found in the SUV. A local CBS reporter initially said a gun was found,[162] but her later revision does not.[163] Dozens of journalists were corralled into a parking lot blocks away from the scene, and were barred from photographing the area.[164]

In 1995, The Baltimore Sun reported that the NSA is the owner of the single largest group of supercomputers.[165]

NSA held a groundbreaking ceremony at Ft. Meade in May 2013 for its High Performance Computing Center 2, expected to open in 2016.[166] Called Site M, the center has a 150 megawatt power substation, 14 administrative buildings and 10 parking garages.[147] It cost $3.2billion and covers 227 acres (92ha; 0.355sqmi).[147] The center is 1,800,000 square feet (17ha; 0.065sqmi)[147] and initially uses 60 megawatts of electricity.[167]

Increments II and III are expected to be completed by 2030, and would quadruple the space, covering 5,800,000 square feet (54ha; 0.21sqmi) with 60 buildings and 40 parking garages.[147]Defense contractors are also establishing or expanding cybersecurity facilities near the NSA and around the Washington metropolitan area.[147]

As of 2012, NSA collected intelligence from four geostationary satellites.[153] Satellite receivers were at Roaring Creek Station in Catawissa, Pennsylvania and Salt Creek Station in Arbuckle, California.[153] It operated ten to twenty taps on U.S. telecom switches. NSA had installations in several U.S. states and from them observed intercepts from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America, and Asia.[153]

NSA had facilities at Friendship Annex (FANX) in Linthicum, Maryland, which is a 20 to 25-minute drive from Ft. Meade;[168] the Aerospace Data Facility at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora outside Denver, Colorado; NSA Texas in the Texas Cryptology Center at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas; NSA Georgia at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia; NSA Hawaii in Honolulu; the Multiprogram Research Facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and elsewhere.[150][153]

On January 6, 2011 a groundbreaking ceremony was held to begin construction on NSA's first Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative (CNCI) Data Center, known as the "Utah Data Center" for short. The $1.5B data center is being built at Camp Williams, Utah, located 25 miles (40km) south of Salt Lake City, and will help support the agency's National Cyber-security Initiative.[169] It is expected to be operational by September 2013.[153]

In 2009, to protect its assets and to access more electricity, NSA sought to decentralize and expand its existing facilities in Ft. Meade and Menwith Hill,[170] the latter expansion expected to be completed by 2015.[171]

The Yakima Herald-Republic cited Bamford, saying that many of NSA's bases for its Echelon program were a legacy system, using outdated, 1990s technology.[172] In 2004, NSA closed its operations at Bad Aibling Station (Field Station 81) in Bad Aibling, Germany.[173] In 2012, NSA began to move some of its operations at Yakima Research Station, Yakima Training Center, in Washington state to Colorado, planning to leave Yakima closed.[174] As of 2013, NSA also intended to close operations at Sugar Grove, West Virginia.[172]

Following the signing in 19461956[175] of the UKUSA Agreement between the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, who then cooperated on signals intelligence and ECHELON,[176] NSA stations were built at GCHQ Bude in Morwenstow, United Kingdom; Geraldton, Pine Gap and Shoal Bay, Australia; Leitrim and Ottawa, Canada; Misawa, Japan; and Waihopai and Tangimoana,[177] New Zealand.[178]

NSA operates RAF Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, United Kingdom, which was, according to BBC News in 2007, the largest electronic monitoring station in the world.[179] Planned in 1954, and opened in 1960, the base covered 562 acres (227ha; 0.878sqmi) in 1999.[180]

The agency's European Cryptologic Center (ECC), with 240 employees in 2011, is headquartered at a US military compound in Griesheim, near Frankfurt in Germany. A 2011 NSA report indicates that the ECC is responsible for the "largest analysis and productivity in Europe" and focusses on various priorities, including Africa, Europe, the Middle East and counterterrorism operations.[181]

In 2013, a new Consolidated Intelligence Center, also to be used by NSA, is being built at the headquarters of the United States Army Europe in Wiesbaden, Germany.[182] NSA's partnership with Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the German foreign intelligence service, was confirmed by BND president Gerhard Schindler.[182]

Thailand is a "3rd party partner" of the NSA along with nine other nations.[183] These are non-English-speaking countries that have made security agreements for the exchange of SIGINT raw material and end product reports.

Thailand is the site of at least two US SIGINT collection stations. One is at the US Embassy in Bangkok, a joint NSA-CIA Special Collection Service (SCS) unit. It presumably eavesdrops on foreign embassies, governmental communications, and other targets of opportunity.[184]

The second installation is a FORNSAT (foreign satellite interception) station in the Thai city of Khon Kaen. It is codenamed INDRA, but has also been referred to as LEMONWOOD.[184] The station is approximately 40 ha (100 acres) in size and consists of a large 3,7004,600 m2 (40,00050,000ft2) operations building on the west side of the ops compound and four radome-enclosed parabolic antennas. Possibly two of the radome-enclosed antennas are used for SATCOM intercept and two antennas used for relaying the intercepted material back to NSA. There is also a PUSHER-type circularly-disposed antenna array (CDAA) array just north of the ops compound.[185][186]

NSA activated Khon Kaen in October 1979. Its mission was to eavesdrop on the radio traffic of Chinese army and air force units in southern China, especially in and around the city of Kunming in Yunnan Province. Back in the late 1970s the base consisted only of a small CDAA antenna array that was remote-controlled via satellite from the NSA listening post at Kunia, Hawaii, and a small force of civilian contractors from Bendix Field Engineering Corp. who job it was to keep the antenna array and satellite relay facilities up and running 24/7.[185]

According to the papers of the late General William Odom, the INDRA facility was upgraded in 1986 with a new British-made PUSHER CDAA antenna as part of an overall upgrade of NSA and Thai SIGINT facilities whose objective was to spy on the neighboring communist nations of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.[185]

The base apparently fell into disrepair in the 1990s as China and Vietnam became more friendly towards the US, and by 2002 archived satellite imagery showed that the PUSHER CDAA antenna had been torn down, perhaps indicating that the base had been closed. At some point in the period since 9/11, the Khon Kaen base was reactivated and expanded to include a sizeable SATCOM intercept mission. It is likely that the NSA presence at Khon Kaen is relatively small, and that most of the work is done by civilian contractors.[185]

NSA's eavesdropping mission includes radio broadcasting, both from various organizations and individuals, the Internet, telephone calls, and other intercepted forms of communication. Its secure communications mission includes military, diplomatic, and all other sensitive, confidential or secret government communications.[187]

According to the Washington Post, "[e]very day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 separate databases."[188]

Originally posted here:
en.m.wikipedia.org

NSA National Security Agency (US government) NSA National Speakers Association NSA No Strings Attached NSA Naval Support Activity NSA Network Security Appliance (Sonicwall) NSA Notary Signing Agent NSA National Security Advisor NSA Not Seasonally Adjusted NSA National Security Archive NSA National Security Act NSA National Society of Accountants NSA National Sheriffs' Association (Alexandria, VA, USA) NSA National Security Affairs NSA No Sugar Added NSA National Stuttering Association NSA National Stroke Association NSA Network Spinal Analysis NSA National Spiritual Assembly (Institution of the Baha'i Faith) NSA Norwegian Shipowners Association NSA North Slope of Alaska NSA National Sheep Association (Malvern, Worcestershire, UK) NSA National Safety Associates NSA National Scrabble Association NSA Non-State Actor (international relations) NSA National Student Association NSA North Star Academy NSA New Saint Andrews College (Moscow, Idaho) NSA National Sunflower Association NSA National Stone Association (Washington, DC) NSA National Stereoscopic Association NSA Negative Security Assurances NSA National Steeplechase Association NSA National Sound Archive NSA National Security Area NSA NATO Standardization Agency NSA National Smokers Alliance NSA Nebraska Statewide Arboretum NSA Negotiated Service Agreement (US postal service) NSA National Security Agents (gaming clan) NSA Non-Standard Analysis NSA National Seniors Australia (est. 1976) NSA Nuclear Science Abstracts NSA Normalized Site Attenuation NSA Nashville School of the Arts (Tennessee) NSA National Storytelling Association NSA National Slag Association (Alexandria, VA) NSA Northern Study Area NSA Navy Support Activity NSA National Skateboard Association NSA Noise Sensitive Area NSA Nikkei Stock Average NSA National Shipping Authority NSA National School of Administration (China) NSA Non-surgical Sperm Aspiration NSA Nunavut Settlement Area NSA New Statistical Account (Reports on the conditions of Scotland, with reports on each parish, in the 1830s) NSA National Supers Agency (fictional from the movie The Incredibles) NSA National Safety Association NSA National Security Anarchists (hacker group) NSA National Sprint Association (UK) NSA Natuurwetenschappelijke Studievereniging Amsterdam (University of Amsterdam Physics Department student organization) NSA Nebraska Soybean Association NSA Naperville Soccer Association NSA No Smoking Area NSA National Softball Association, Inc. NSA Norcross Soccer Association (Georgia) NSA Naval Supervising Activity NSA National Singles Association (Atlanta, Georgia) NSA Navy Stock Account NSA Night Stalker Association NSA National Success Association NSA National Shuffleboard Association NSA National Software Alliance NSA No Significant Abnormalities (disease assessment) NSA Northern Slope of Alaska NSA National Service Alliance, LLC NSA Non Semi Auto (concealed handgun license; Texas) NSA Non Standard Area (of a database) NSA Nantucket Shellfish Association (Nantucket, MA) NSA National Scout Association NSA National Standard Application NSA Narrow-Slot Approximation NSA National Sentinel Audit NSA Node Switching Assembly NSA Net Sales Area NSA Network Search Algorithm NSA Nikkei Student Association NSA Nuclear Support Agency NSA Naval Systems Analysis NSA Nichiren Shosu of America NSA Net Sellable Area (real estate) NSA Network South Australia (Adelaide, Australia) NSA Neutron Source Assembly NSA Net Server Assistant NSA Norwegian Security Act NSA Nabelschnurarterie (German: Umbilical Cord Artery) NSA Narrow Slot Aperture NSA Nikkei Siam Aluminium Limited (Pathumtani, Thailand) NSA New Student Ambassadors (various schools) NSA Nippon Software Industry Association (Japan) NSA Nippon Steel Australia NSA Nippon Supporters Association (Japan) NSA Nippon Surfing Association (Japan) NSA No Secrets Association NSA Non-Self-Aligned NSA Non Standard Ammunition (munitions) NSA Neil Stewart Associates (UK) NSA Network Security Administrator NSA Network Security Agreement NSA Network Simplex Algorithm NSA New Settlement Apartments (New York, NY) NSA New Small Airplane (Boeing) NSA Network Storage Appliance (computing) NSA Network Supported Account (Cisco) NSA Network Systems Administrator (various organizations) NSA Nouvelle Substance Active (French: New Active Substance; Canada) NSA Nordic Securities Association (est. 2008) NSA Non-Standard Auto (insurance) NSA Naczelny Sad Administracyjny (Polish: Supreme Administrative Court) NSA National Scrapbooking Association NSA National Sex Authority NSA National Smokejumper Association NSA National Snow Analyses (US NOAA) NSA Need Special Assistance NSA Natural Systems Agriculture NSA National Supervisory Authority (EU) NSA National Survey of Adolescents NSA Native Speakers of Arabic NSA National Statistical Authorities (EU) NSA National Sports Academy (various locations) NSA National Space Agency

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NSA | Define NSA at AcronymFinder

PRISM is a clandestine[1]surveillance program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from at least nine major US internet companies.[2][3][4] Since 2001 the United States government has increased its scope for such surveillance, and so this program was launched in 2007.

PRISM is a government code name for a data-collection effort known officially by the SIGAD US-984XN.[5][6] The PRISM program collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google Inc. under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms.[7] The NSA can use these PRISM requests to target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded earlier,[8][9] and to get data that is easier to handle, among other things.[10]

PRISM began in 2007 in the wake of the passage of the Protect America Act under the Bush Administration.[11][12] The program is operated under the supervision of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court, or FISC) pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).[13] Its existence was leaked six years later by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who warned that the extent of mass data collection was far greater than the public knew and included what he characterized as "dangerous" and "criminal" activities.[14] The disclosures were published by The Guardian and The Washington Post on June 6, 2013. Subsequent documents have demonstrated a financial arrangement between NSA's Special Source Operations division (SSO) and PRISM partners in the millions of dollars.[15]

Documents indicate that PRISM is "the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports", and it accounts for 91% of the NSA's internet traffic acquired under FISA section 702 authority."[16][17] The leaked information came to light one day after the revelation that the FISA Court had been ordering a subsidiary of telecommunications company Verizon Communications to turn over to the NSA logs tracking all of its customers' telephone calls.[18][19]

U.S. government officials have disputed some aspects of the Guardian and Washington Post stories and have defended the program by asserting it cannot be used on domestic targets without a warrant, that it has helped to prevent acts of terrorism, and that it receives independent oversight from the federal government's executive, judicial and legislative branches.[20][21] On June 19, 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama, during a visit to Germany, stated that the NSA's data gathering practices constitute "a circumscribed, narrow system directed at us being able to protect our people."[22]

PRISM was publicly revealed when classified documents about the program were leaked to journalists of The Washington Post and The Guardian by Edward Snowden at the time an NSA contractor during a visit to Hong Kong.[2][3] The leaked documents included 41 PowerPoint slides, four of which were published in news articles.[2][3]

The documents identified several technology companies as participants in the PRISM program, including Microsoft in 2007, Yahoo! in 2008, Google in 2009, Facebook in 2009, Paltalk in 2009, YouTube in 2010, AOL in 2011, Skype in 2011 and Apple in 2012.[23] The speaker's notes in the briefing document reviewed by The Washington Post indicated that "98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft".[2]

The slide presentation stated that much of the world's electronic communications pass through the U.S., because electronic communications data tend to follow the least expensive route rather than the most physically direct route, and the bulk of the world's internet infrastructure is based in the United States.[16] The presentation noted that these facts provide United States intelligence analysts with opportunities for intercepting the communications of foreign targets as their electronic data pass into or through the United States.[3][16]

Snowden's subsequent disclosures included statements that governments such as the United Kingdom's GCHQ also undertook mass interception and tracking of internet and communications data[24] described by Germany as "nightmarish" if true[25] allegations that the NSA engaged in "dangerous" and "criminal" activity by "hacking" civilian infrastructure networks in other countries such as "universities, hospitals, and private businesses",[14] and alleged that compliance offered only very limited restrictive effect on mass data collection practices (including of Americans) since restrictions "are policy-based, not technically based, and can change at any time", adding that "Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications",[14] with numerous self-granted exceptions, and that NSA policies encourage staff to assume the benefit of the doubt in cases of uncertainty.[26][27][28]

Below are a number of slides released by Edward Snowden showing the operation and processes behind the PRISM program.

Slide showing that much of the world's communications flow through the U.S.

Details of information collected via PRISM

Slide listing companies and the date that PRISM collection began

Slide showing PRISM's tasking process

Slide showing the PRISM collection dataflow

Slide showing PRISM case numbers

Slide showing the REPRISMFISA Web app

Slide showing some PRISM targets.

Slide fragment mentioning "upstream collection", FAA702, EO 12333, and references yahoo.com explicitly in the text.

FAA702 Operations, and map

FAA702 Operations, and map. The subheader reads "Collection only possible under FAA702 Authority". FAIRVIEW is in the center box.

FAA702 Operations, and map. The subheader reads "Collection only possible under FAA702 Authority". STORMBREW is in the center box.

Tasking, Points to Remember. Transcript of body: Whenever your targets meet FAA criteria, you should consider asking to FAA. Emergency tasking processes exist for [imminent /immediate ] threat to life situations and targets can be placed on [illegible] within hours (surveillance and stored comms). Get to know your Product line FAA adjudicators and FAA leads.

The French newspaper Le Monde disclosed new PRISM slides (See Page 4, 7 and 8) coming from the "PRISM/US-984XN Overview" presentation on October 21, 2013.[29] The British newspaper The Guardian disclosed new PRISM slides (see pages 3 and 6) in November 2013 which on the one hand compares PRISM with the Upstream program, and on the other hand deals with collaboration between the NSA's Threat Operations Center and the FBI.[30]

Wikimedia Commons keeps copies of the leaked PowerPoint slides, and other associated documents.

PRISM is a program from the Special Source Operations (SSO) division of the NSA, which in the tradition of NSA's intelligence alliances, cooperates with as many as 100 trusted U.S. companies since the 1970s.[2] A prior program, the Terrorist Surveillance Program,[31][32] was implemented in the wake of the September 11 attacks under the George W. Bush Administration but was widely criticized and challenged as illegal, because it did not include warrants obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.[32][33][34][35][36] PRISM was authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.[16]

PRISM was enabled under President Bush by the Protect America Act of 2007 and by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which immunizes private companies from legal action when they cooperate with U.S. government agencies in intelligence collection. In 2012 the act was renewed by Congress under President Obama for an additional five years, through December 2017.[3][37][38] According to The Register, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 "specifically authorizes intelligence agencies to monitor the phone, email, and other communications of U.S. citizens for up to a week without obtaining a warrant" when one of the parties is outside the U.S.[37]

The most detailed description of the PRISM program can be found in a report about NSA's collection efforts under Section 702 FAA, that was released by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) on July 2, 2014.[39]

According to this report, PRISM is only used to collect internet communications, not telephone conversations. These internet communications are not collected in bulk, but in a targeted way: only communications that are to or from specific selectors, like e-mail addresses, can be gathered. Under PRISM, there's no collection based upon keywords or names.[39]

The actual collection process is done by the Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU) of the FBI, which on behalf of the NSA sends the selectors to the US internet service providers, which were previously served with a Section 702 Directive. Under this directive, the provider is legally obliged to hand over (to DITU) all communications to or from the selectors provided by the government.[39] DITU then sends these communications to NSA, where they are stored in various databases, depending on their type.

Data, both content and metadata, that already have been collected under the PRISM program, may be searched for both US and Non-US person identifiers. These kind of queries became known as "back-door searches" and are conducted by NSA, FBI and CIA.[40] Each of these agencies have slightly different protocols and safeguards to protect searches with a US person identifier.[39]

Internal NSA presentation slides included in the various media disclosures show that the NSA could unilaterally access data and perform "extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information" with examples including email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP chats (such as Skype), file transfers, and social networking details.[3] Snowden summarized that "in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc. analyst has access to query raw SIGINT [signals intelligence] databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want."[14]

According to The Washington Post, the intelligence analysts search PRISM data using terms intended to identify suspicious communications of targets whom the analysts suspect with at least 51 percent confidence to not be U.S. citizens, but in the process, communication data of some U.S. citizens are also collected unintentionally.[2] Training materials for analysts tell them that while they should periodically report such accidental collection of non-foreign U.S. data, "it's nothing to worry about."[2]

According to The Guardian, NSA had access to chats and emails on Hotmail.com, Skype, because Microsoft had "developed a surveillance capability to deal" with the interception of chats, and "for Prism collection against Microsoft email services will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption."[41][42]

Also according to The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald even low-level NSA analysts are allowed to search and listen to the communications of Americans and other people without court approval and supervision. Greenwald said low level Analysts can, via systems like PRISM, "listen to whatever emails they want, whatever telephone calls, browsing histories, Microsoft Word documents.[31] And it's all done with no need to go to a court, with no need to even get supervisor approval on the part of the analyst."[43]

He added that the NSA databank, with its years of collected communications, allows analysts to search that database and listen "to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you've entered, and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or that IP address do in the future."[43] Greenwald was referring in the context of the foregoing quotes to the NSA program X-Keyscore.[44]

Unified Targeting Tool

Shortly after publication of the reports by The Guardian and The Washington Post, the United States Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, on June 7, 2013 released a statement confirming that for nearly six years the government of the United States had been using large internet services companies such as Google and Facebook to collect information on foreigners outside the United States as a defense against national security threats.[18] The statement read in part, "The Guardian and The Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They contain numerous inaccuracies."[46] He went on to say, "Section 702 is a provision of FISA that is designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States. It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States."[46] Clapper concluded his statement by stating, "The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans."[46] On March 12, 2013, Clapper had told the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the NSA does "not wittingly" collect any type of data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.[47] Clapper later admitted the statement he made on March 12, 2013 was a lie,[48] or in his words "I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no."[49]

On June 7, 2013 U.S. President Barack Obama, referring to the PRISM program[citation needed] and the NSA's telephone calls logging program, said, "What you've got is two programs that were originally authorized by Congress, have been repeatedly authorized by Congress. Bipartisan majorities have approved them. Congress is continually briefed on how these are conducted. There are a whole range of safeguards involved. And federal judges are overseeing the entire program throughout."[50] He also said, "You can't have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we're going to have to make some choices as a society."[50] In separate statements, senior Obama administration officials (not mentioned by name in source) said that Congress had been briefed 13 times on the programs since 2009.[51]

On June 8, 2013, Director of National Intelligence Clapper made an additional public statement about PRISM and released a fact sheet providing further information about the program, which he described as "an internal government computer system used to facilitate the government's statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (50 U.S.C. 1881a)."[52][53] The fact sheet stated that "the surveillance activities published in The Guardian and the Washington Post are lawful and conducted under authorities widely known and discussed, and fully debated and authorized by Congress."[52] The fact sheet also stated that "the United States Government does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers. All such information is obtained with FISA Court approval and with the knowledge of the provider based upon a written directive from the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence." It said that the Attorney General provides FISA Court rulings and semi-annual reports about PRISM activities to Congress, "provid[ing] an unprecedented degree of accountability and transparency."[52] Democratic Senators Udall and Wyden, who serve on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, subsequently criticized the fact sheet as being inaccurate.[clarification needed] NSA Director General Keith Alexander acknowledged the errors, stating that the fact sheet "could have more precisely described" the requirements governing the collection of e-mail and other internet content from U.S. companies. The fact sheet was withdrawn from the NSA's website around June 26.[54]

In a closed-doors Senate hearing around June 11, FBI Director Robert Mueller said that Snowden's leaks had caused "significant harm to our nation and to our safety."[55] In the same Senate NSA Director Alexander defended the program.[further explanation needed] Alexander's defense was immediately criticized by Senators Udall and Wyden, who said they saw no evidence that the NSA programs had produced "uniquely valuable intelligence." In a joint statement, they wrote, "Gen Alexander's testimony yesterday suggested that the NSA's bulk phone records collection program helped thwart 'dozens' of terrorist attacks, but all of the plots that he mentioned appear to have been identified using other collection methods."[55][56]

On June 18, NSA Director Alexander said in an open hearing before the House Intelligence Committee of Congress that communications surveillance had helped prevent more than 50 potential terrorist attacks worldwide (at least 10 of them involving terrorism suspects or targets in the United States) between 2001 and 2013, and that the PRISM web traffic surveillance program contributed in over 90 percent of those cases.[57][58][59] According to court records, one example Alexander gave regarding a thwarted attack by al Qaeda on the New York Stock Exchange was not in fact foiled by surveillance.[60] Several senators wrote Director of National Intelligence Clapper asking him to provide other examples.[61]

U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told various news outlets that by June 24 they were already seeing what they said was evidence that suspected terrorists had begun changing their communication practices in order to evade detection by the surveillance tools disclosed by Snowden.[62][63]

In contrast to their swift and forceful reactions the previous day to allegations that the government had been conducting surveillance of United States citizens' telephone records, Congressional leaders initially had little to say about the PRISM program the day after leaked information about the program was published. Several lawmakers declined to discuss PRISM, citing its top-secret classification,[64] and others said that they had not been aware of the program.[65] After statements had been released by the President and the Director of National Intelligence, some lawmakers began to comment:

Senator John McCain (R-AZ)

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), member of Senate Intelligence Committee and past member of Homeland Security Committee

Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), principal sponsor of the Patriot Act

Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI), a Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Senator Mark Udall (D-CO)

Representative Todd Rokita (R-IN)

Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)

Following these statements some lawmakers from both parties warned national security officials during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee that they must change their use of sweeping National Security Agency surveillance programs or face losing the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that have allowed for the agency's mass collection of telephone metadata.[75] "Section 215 expires at the end of 2015, and unless you realize you've got a problem, that is not going to be renewed," Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., author of the USA Patriot Act, threatened during the hearing.[75] "It's got to be changed, and you've got to change how you operate section 215. Otherwise, in two and a half years, you're not going to have it anymore."[75]

Leaks of classified documents pointed to the role of a special court in enabling the government's secret surveillance programs, but members of the court maintained they were not collaborating with the executive branch.[76]The New York Times, however, reported in July 2013 that in "more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation's surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks."[77] After Members of the U.S. Congress pressed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to release declassified versions of its secret ruling, the court dismissed those requests arguing that the decisions can't be declassified because they contain classified information.[78]Reggie Walton, the current FISA presiding judge, said in a statement: "The perception that the court is a rubber stamp is absolutely false. There is a rigorous review process of applications submitted by the executive branch, spearheaded initially by five judicial branch lawyers who are national security experts, and then by the judges, to ensure that the court's authorizations comport with what the applicable statutes authorize."[79] The accusation of being a "rubber stamp" was further rejected by Walton who wrote in a letter to Senator Patrick J. Leahy: "The annual statistics provided to Congress by the Attorney General [...]frequently cited to in press reports as a suggestion that the Court's approval rate of application is over 99%reflect only the number of final applications submitted to and acted on by the Court. These statistics do not reflect the fact that many applications are altered to prior or final submission or even withheld from final submission entirely, often after an indication that a judge would not approve them."[80]

The U.S. military has acknowledged blocking access to parts of The Guardian website for thousands of defense personnel across the country,[81] and blocking the entire Guardian website for personnel stationed throughout Afghanistan, the Middle East, and South Asia.[82] A spokesman said the military was filtering out reports and content relating to government surveillance programs to preserve "network hygiene" and prevent any classified material from appearing on unclassified parts of its computer systems.[81] Access to the Washington Post, which also published information on classified NSA surveillance programs disclosed by Edward Snowden, had not been blocked at the time the blocking of access to The Guardian was reported.[82]

The former head of the Austrian Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism, Gert-Ren Polli, stated he knew the PRISM program under a different name and stated that surveillance activities had occurred in Austria as well. Polli had publicly stated in 2009 that he had received requests from US intelligence agencies to do things that would be in violation of Austrian law, which Polli refused to allow.[83][84]

The Australian government has said it will investigate the impact of the PRISM program and the use of the Pine Gap surveillance facility on the privacy of Australian citizens.[85] Australia's former foreign minister Bob Carr said that Australians shouldn't be concerned about PRISM but that cybersecurity is high on the government's list of concerns.[86] An Australian diplomat stated that the acts of Edward Snowden were treachery and offered a staunch defence of her nation's intelligence co-operation with America. [87]

Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, responded by cancelling a planned October 2013 state visit to the United States, demanding an official apology, which by October 20, 2013, hadn't come.[88] Also, Rousseff classified the spying as unacceptable between more harsh words in a speech before the UN General Assembly on September 24, 2013.[89] As a result, Boeing lost out on a US$4.5 billion contract for fighter jets to Sweden's Saab Group.[90]

Canada's national cryptologic agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSEC), said that commenting on PRISM "would undermine CSE's ability to carry out its mandate." Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart lamented Canada's standards when it comes to protecting personal online privacy stating "We have fallen too far behind" in her report. "While other nations' data protection authorities have the legal power to make binding orders, levy hefty fines and take meaningful action in the event of serious data breaches, we are restricted to a 'soft' approach: persuasion, encouragement and, at the most, the potential to publish the names of transgressors in the public interest." And, "when push comes to shove," Stoddart wrote, "short of a costly and time-consuming court battle, we have no power to enforce our recommendations."[91][92]

On 20 October 2013 a committee at the European Parliament backed a measure that, if it is enacted, would require American companies to seek clearance from European officials before complying with United States warrants seeking private data. The legislation has been under consideration for two years. The vote is part of efforts in Europe to shield citizens from online surveillance in the wake of revelations about a far-reaching spying program by the U.S. National Security Agency.[93] Germany and France have also had ongoing mutual talks about how they can keep European email traffic from going across American servers.[94]

On October 21, 2013 the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, summoned the U.S. Ambassador, Charles Rivkin, to the Quai d'Orsay in Paris to protest large-scale spying on French citizens by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Paris prosecutors had opened preliminary inquiries into the NSA program in July, but Fabius said, " obviously we need to go further" and "we must quickly assure that these practices aren't repeated."[95]

Germany did not receive any raw PRISM data, according to a Reuters report.[96]German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that "the internet is new to all of us" to explain the nature of the program; Matthew Schofield of McClatchy Washington Bureau said, "She was roundly mocked for that statement."[97] Gert-Ren Polli, a former Austrian counter-terrorism official, said in 2013 that it is "absurd and unnatural" for the German authorities to pretend not to have known anything.[83][84] The German Army was using PRISM to support its operations in Afghanistan as early as 2011.[98]

In October 2013, it was reported that the NSA monitored Merkel's cell phone.[99] The United States denied the report, but following the allegations, Merkel called President Obama and told him that spying on friends was "never acceptable, no matter in what situation."[100]

Israeli newspaper Calcalist discussed[101] the Business Insider article[102] about the possible involvement of technologies from two secretive Israeli companies in the PRISM programVerint Systems and Narus.

The Mexican Government after finding out about the PRISM program has started to build its own spying program to spy on its own citizens. According to Jenaro Villamil a writer from Proceso(magazine), CISEN the intelligence agency from Mexico has started to work with IBM and Hewlett Packard to develop its own data gathering software. Facebook, Twitter, Emails and other social network sites are going to be priority."[103]

In New Zealand, University of Otago information science Associate Professor Hank Wolfe said that "under what was unofficially known as the Five Eyes Alliance, New Zealand and other governments, including the United States, Australia, Canada, and Britain, dealt with internal spying by saying they didn't do it. But they have all the partners doing it for them and then they share all the information."[104]

Edward Snowden, in a live streamed Google Hangout to Kim Dotcom and Julian Assange alleged that he had received intelligence from New Zealand, and the NSA has listening posts in New Zealand[105]

At a meeting of European Union leaders held the week of 21 October 2013, Mariano Rajoy, Spain's prime minister, said that "spying activities aren't proper among partner countries and allies". On 28 October 2013 the Spanish government summoned the American ambassador, James Costos, to address allegations that the U.S. had collected data on 60 million telephone calls in Spain. Separately, igo Mndez de Vigo, a Spanish secretary of state, referred to the need to maintain "a necessary balance" between security and privacy concerns, but said that the recent allegations of spying, "if proven to be true, are improper and unacceptable between partners and friendly countries".[106]

In the United Kingdom, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which also has its own surveillance program Tempora, had access to the PRISM program on or before June 2010 and wrote 197 reports with it in 2012 alone. But after 2014, the Tempora lost its access to the PRISM programme.[citation needed] The Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament reviewed the reports GCHQ produced on the basis of intelligence sought from the US. They found in each case a warrant for interception was in place in accordance with the legal safeguards contained in UK law.[107]

In August 2013, The Guardian newspaper's offices were visited by agents from GCHQ, who ordered and supervised the destruction of the hard drives containing information acquired from Snowden.[108]

The original Washington Post and Guardian articles reporting on PRISM noted that one of the leaked briefing documents said PRISM involves collection of data "directly from the servers" of several major internet services providers.[2][3]

Corporate executives of several companies identified in the leaked documents told The Guardian that they had no knowledge of the PRISM program in particular and also denied making information available to the government on the scale alleged by news reports.[3][109] Statements of several of the companies named in the leaked documents were reported by TechCrunch and The Washington Post as follows:[110][111]

In response to the technology companies' denials of the NSA being able to directly access the companies' servers, The New York Times reported that sources had stated the NSA was gathering the surveillance data from the companies using other technical means in response to court orders for specific sets of data.[18]The Washington Post suggested, "It is possible that the conflict between the PRISM slides and the company spokesmen is the result of imprecision on the part of the NSA author. In another classified report obtained by The Post, the arrangement is described as allowing 'collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,' rather than directly to company servers."[2] "[I]n context, 'direct' is more likely to mean that the NSA is receiving data sent to them deliberately by the tech companies, as opposed to intercepting communications as they're transmitted to some other destination.[111]

"If these companies received an order under the FISA amendments act, they are forbidden by law from disclosing having received the order and disclosing any information about the order at all," Mark Rumold, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told ABC News.[114]

On May 28, 2013, Google was ordered by United States District Court Judge Susan Illston to comply with a National Security Letter issued by the FBI to provide user data without a warrant.[115] Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an interview with VentureBeat said, "I certainly appreciate that Google put out a transparency report, but it appears that the transparency didn't include this. I wouldn't be surprised if they were subject to a gag order."[116]

The New York Times reported on June 7, 2013, that "Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations."[117] The other companies held discussions with national security personnel on how to make data available more efficiently and securely.[117] In some cases, these companies made modifications to their systems in support of the intelligence collection effort.[117] The dialogues have continued in recent months, as General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has met with executives including those at Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Intel.[117] These details on the discussions provide insight into the disparity between initial descriptions of the government program including a training slide which states, "Collection directly from the servers"[118] and the companies' denials.[117]

While providing data in response to a legitimate FISA request approved by the FISA Court is a legal requirement, modifying systems to make it easier for the government to collect the data is not. This is why Twitter could legally decline to provide an enhanced mechanism for data transmission.[117] Other than Twitter, the companies were effectively asked to construct a locked mailbox and provide the key to the government, people briefed on the negotiations said.[117] Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information.[117] Google does not provide a lockbox system, but instead transmits required data by hand delivery or ssh.[119]

In response to the publicity surrounding media reports of data-sharing, several companies requested permission to reveal more public information about the nature and scope of information provided in response to National Security requests.

On June 14, 2013, Facebook reported that the U.S. government had authorized the communication of "about these numbers in aggregate, and as a range." In a press release posted to its web site, the company reported, "For the six months ending December 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests) was between 9,000 and 10,000." The company further reported that the requests impacted "between 18,000 and 19,000" user accounts, a "tiny fraction of one percent" of more than 1.1 billion active user accounts.[120]

That same day, Microsoft reported that for the same period, it received "between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 consumer accounts from U.S. governmental entities (including local, state and federal)" which impacted "a tiny fraction of Microsoft's global customer base."[121]

Google issued a statement criticizing the requirement that data be reported in aggregated form, stating that lumping national security requests with criminal request data would be "a step backwards" from its previous, more detailed practices on its website's transparency report. The company said that it would continue to seek government permission to publish the number and extent of FISA requests.[122]

Cisco Systems has seen a huge drop in export sales because of spying fears from the National Security Agency using backdoors in its products.[123]

On September 12, 2014, Yahoo! reported the U.S. Government threatened the imposition of $250,000 in fines per day if Yahoo didn't hand over user data as part of the NSA's PRISM program.[124] It is not known if other companies were threatened or fined for not providing data in response to a legitimate FISA requests.

The New York Times editorial board charged that the Obama administration "has now lost all credibility on this issue,"[125] and lamented that "for years, members of Congress ignored evidence that domestic intelligence-gathering had grown beyond their control, and, even now, few seem disturbed to learn that every detail about the public's calling and texting habits now reside in a N.S.A. database."[126] It wrote with respect to the FISA-Court in context of PRISM that it is "a perversion of the American justice system" when "judicial secrecy is coupled with a one-sided presentation of the issues."[127] According to the New York Times, "the result is a court whose reach is expanding far beyond its original mandate and without any substantive check."[127]

James Robertson, a former federal district judge based in Washington who served on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court for three years between 2002 and 2005 and who ruled against the Bush administration in the landmark Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case, said FISA court is independent but flawed because only the government's side is represented effectively in its deliberations. "Anyone who has been a judge will tell you a judge needs to hear both sides of a case," said James Robertson.[128] Without this judges do not benefit from adversarial debate. He suggested creating an advocate with security clearance who would argue against government filings.[129] Robertson questioned whether the secret FISA court should provide overall legal approval for the surveillance programs, saying the court "has turned into something like an administrative agency." Under the changes brought by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008, which expanded the US government's authority by forcing the court to approve entire surveillance systems and not just surveillance warrants as it previously handled, "the court is now approving programmatic surveillance. I don't think that is a judicial function."[128] Robertson also said he was "frankly stunned" by the New York Times report[77] that FISA court rulings had created a new body of law broadening the ability of the NSA to use its surveillance programs to target not only terrorists but suspects in cases involving espionage, cyberattacks and weapons of mass destruction.[128]

Former CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson and former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, writing in an op-ed article published in The Guardian, said that "Prism and other NSA data-mining programs might indeed be very effective in hunting and capturing actual terrorists, but we don't have enough information as a society to make that decision."[130] Computer security expert John Bambenek from the University of Illinois suggested that use of data mining in national security cases might be prone to inaccuracy and manipulation.[131]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an international non-profit digital-rights group based in the U.S., is hosting a tool, by which an American resident can write to their government representatives regarding their opposition to mass spying.[132]

The Obama administration's argument that NSA surveillance programs such as PRISM and Boundless Informant had been necessary to prevent acts of terrorism was challenged by several parties. Ed Pilkington and Nicholas Watt of The Guardian said of the case of Najibullah Zazi, who had planned to bomb the New York City Subway, that interviews with involved parties and U.S. and British court documents indicated that the investigation into the case had actually been initiated in response to "conventional" surveillance methods such as "old-fashioned tip-offs" of the British intelligence services, rather than to leads produced by NSA surveillance.[133] Michael Daly of The Daily Beast stated that even though Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who is alleged to have conducted the 2013 Boston marathon bombings with his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had visited the Al Qaeda-affiliated Inspire magazine website, and even though Russian intelligence officials had raised concerns with U.S. intelligence officials about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, PRISM did not prevent him from carrying out the Boston attacks. Daly observed that, "The problem is not just what the National Security Agency is gathering at the risk of our privacy but what it is apparently unable to monitor at the risk of our safety."[134]

Ron Paul, a former Republican member of Congress and prominent libertarian, thanked Snowden and Greenwald and denounced the mass surveillance as unhelpful and damaging, urging instead more transparency in U.S. government actions.[135] He called Congress "derelict in giving that much power to the government," and said that had he been elected president, he would have ordered searches only when there was probable cause of a crime having been committed, which he said was not how the PRISM program was being operated.[136]

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman defended limited government surveillance programs intended to protect the American people from terrorist acts:

Yes, I worry about potential government abuse of privacy from a program designed to prevent another 9/11abuse that, so far, does not appear to have happened. But I worry even more about another 9/11. ... If there were another 9/11, I fear that 99 percent of Americans would tell their members of Congress: "Do whatever you need to do to, privacy be damned, just make sure this does not happen again." That is what I fear most. That is why I'll reluctantly, very reluctantly, trade off the government using data mining to look for suspicious patterns in phone numbers called and e-mail addressesand then have to go to a judge to get a warrant to actually look at the content under guidelines set by Congressto prevent a day where, out of fear, we give government a license to look at anyone, any e-mail, any phone call, anywhere, anytime.[137]

Political commentator David Brooks similarly cautioned that government data surveillance programs are a necessary evil: "if you don't have mass data sweeps, well, then these agencies are going to want to go back to the old-fashioned eavesdropping, which is a lot more intrusive."[138]

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer worried less about the legality of PRISM and other NSA surveillance tools than about the potential for their abuse without more stringent oversight. "The problem here is not constitutionality. ... We need a toughening of both congressional oversight and judicial review, perhaps even some independent outside scrutiny. Plus periodic legislative revisionsay, reauthorization every couple of yearsin light of the efficacy of the safeguards and the nature of the external threat. The object is not to abolish these vital programs. It's to fix them."[139]

In a blog post, David Simon, the creator of The Wire, compared the NSA's programs, including PRISM, to a 1980s effort by the City of Baltimore to add dialed number recorders to all pay phones to know which individuals were being called by the callers;[140] the city believed that drug traffickers were using pay phones and pagers, and a municipal judge allowed the city to place the recorders. The placement of the dialers formed the basis of the show's first season. Simon argued that the media attention regarding the NSA programs is a "faux scandal."[140][141] Simon had stated that many classes of people in American society had already faced constant government surveillance.

Political theorist, and frequent critic of U.S. government policies, Noam Chomsky argued, "Governments should not have this capacity. But governments will use whatever technology is available to them to combat their primary enemy which is their own population."[142]

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted June 11 through 13 found that 66% of Americans generally supported the program.[143][144][Notes 1] However, a Quinnipiac University poll conducted June 28 through July 8 found that 45% of registered voters think the surveillance programs have gone too far, with 40% saying they do not go far enough, compared to 25% saying they had gone too far and 63% saying not far enough in 2010.[145] Other polls have shown similar shifts in public opinion as revelations about the programs were leaked.[146][147]

In terms of economic impact, a study released in August by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation[148] found that the disclosure of PRISM could cost the U.S. economy between $21.5 and $35 billion in lost cloud computing business over three years.[149][150][151][152]

Sentiment around the world was that of general displeasure upon learning the extent of world communication data mining. Some national leaders spoke against the NSA and some spoke against their own national surveillance. One national minister had scathing comments on the National Security Agency's data-mining program, citing Benjamin Franklin: "The more a society monitors, controls, and observes its citizens, the less free it is."[153] Some question if the costs of hunting terrorists now overshadows the loss of citizen privacy.[154][155]

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