A Google search indicates that the person lives in Geneva. Maybe the phone number associated with the internet data has an overseas prefix. After, every time he or she begins a new query, he or she has to convince the system that the target is foreign. The analyst will then use other databases and tools to figure out where and when the VPN came online, who might be using it, and what subset of other internet data he or she needs to see.īefore the FISA Amendments Act was passed, an analyst presumably would not have to justify, in advance, the foreignness of a particular target or search query. If the NSA needs to figure out the new virtual private networks that the Haqqani network is using in Pakistan, an analyst can task XKEYSCORE to provide it with a list of VPNs that the collection systems have picked up within a particular timeframe. Fortunately, the program is set up to allow analysts to look at slices of data that XKEYSCORE has structured.
I should amend that sentence to add that there are so many different types of data, too, that asking for "all the Internet traffic associated with Pakistan" is going to blow some circuits. Much of the presentation instructs analysts to query their targets carefully because there's so much stuff that the NSA can't even retain it all. As the presentation says, the stuff itself is collected by some entity called F6 and something else called FORNSAT and then something with the acronym SSO.
XKEYSCORE is useful because it gets the "front end full take feeds" from the various NSA collection points around the world and importantly, knows what to do with it to make it responsive to search queries.
Grady and I reported in our book, is the worldwide base level database for such metadata.
XKEYSCORE is not a thing that DOES collecting it's a series of user interfaces, backend databases, servers and software that selects certain types of metadata that the NSA has ALREADY collected using other methods. Just as the Guardian might be accused of over-hyping the clear and present danger associated with this particular program, critics will reflexively overstate the harm that its disclosure would reasonably produce. Certainly, work product associated with XKEYSCORE is Top Secret with several added caveats. I quibble with the Guardian's description of the program as "TOP SECRET." The word is not secret its association with the NSA is not secret that the NSA collects bulk data on foreign targets is, well, probably classified, but at the SECRET level.