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The secret documents revealed by Edward Snowden, a former US intelligence official, reveal the scope of electronic surveillance by US intelligence agencies, Its goal is to reach millions of people around the world, including the leaders of its allies in the United States.
Previously, the director of the U.S. National Intelligence Agency, James Clapper, said that analyzing the intentions of foreign politicians was the ultimate goal of U.S. intelligence operations.
Disclosure forces the US Senate to call for a serious review of NSA espionage)（
According to Snowden's publicly available data, there is an understanding of the methods used in intelligence.
1. Company information on the Internet
James Clapper, director of the National Intelligence Agency, acknowledged that national authorities did receive data on users of Internet services.
At that time, it was found that American intelligence agencies could directly access the servers of nine largest Internet companies, including apple, Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft pass a secret prism spy program.
As can be seen from the disclosure, NSA and the UK government communication center have obtained e-mail, instant messaging services, and documents stored on the information server. Communication with social networks.
Internet giants quickly denied allegations of "direct access to servers," and some experts questioned prism's ability.
Peter sommer, a digital forensic expert, told the BBC that the visit was a rat hole, not a complete underworld, because intelligence could only collect it. Data from specific observation points, not from all people who are willing to observe.
2. Fiber optic cable interception information
According to a document published by the guardian in June, the UK Government Communications Centre（
According to the documents, the search and rescue center has access to 200 fibre optic cables, enabling it to intercept up to 600 million communications a day.
According to the newspaper, information about Internet and telephone use was kept by analysts for up to 30 days.
The office of central support services declined to comment on the allegations, but said it was in full compliance with the law.
In October, l'espresso, an Italian weekly, published an article claiming that the central search and rescue center and the national security agency had intercepted data that constituted Commercial and military secrets from three submarine cables. In Italy.
The three termination cables in Sicily are called seamewe3, seamewe4 and the "Europe Asia flag".
3. Monitor telephone
Merkel's phone hacking came from Spiegel magazine, according to documents provided by Edward Snowden, a former US intelligence official.
According to media reports, Merkel's phone has been bugged by intelligence since 2002, and it has only recently stopped.
On Wednesday, the German prime minister called U.S. President Barack Obama to explain that her phone was bugged by Americans.
According to the document, the U.S. monitoring team, based at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, has carried out similar operations in 80 locations around the world.
On his blog, investigative journalist Duncan Campbell explained that the walls of the official building have no windows to be used as "ear scouts."
According to reporters, these deaf and dumb walls are made of non-conductive materials, making them transparent to radio waves, This enables radio location to be carried out unimpeded and imperceptible after what happens to the opposite building.
Spiegel pointed out that the nature of Merkel's mobile phone monitoring was not seen in the leaked documents.
However, recent publications point out that the phone calls of two prime ministers - one unencrypted - have become the target of interception. The second, more secure government agency she uses to solve problems within the party.
According to security experts, standard encryption systems for mobile phones can be vulnerable for the following reasons: It uses different software to configure and encrypt messages. This provides an opportunity to establish an interception system between the program generating the information and the program responsible for coding.
How the encryption system works
This can be done at either end of the chat to intercept the message, or before it is encrypted and sent to the sender, Or after the consignee receives and decodes it.
Encryption "is becoming more and more common from the beginning to the end", filling this gap, because the program that generates the information itself is encrypted. In addition, many of these systems use closed networks, so that messages will not be made public and can only be decoded after decoding. How to get to the right recipient.
Like tapping the German prime minister's phone, there are doubts that the NSA is trying to track millions of phone connections, In this regard, I would like to mention that the presidents of Mexico and Brazil signed an agreement in October 2000 and October 2001, respectively.
4. Targeted espionage
In June, Spiegel released information on the espionage activities of the national security agency at the European Union administration buildings in the United States and Europe.
Newspaper reporters claim that they saw the documents of Edward Snowden's merger, from which we can see that, Representatives of the United States in Washington and 27 EU member states in the United Nations headquarters building in New York.
According to the documents, the NSA has also conducted wiretaps at the seat of the European Union Council of ministers and the European Council in Brussels.
In July, guardian released a list of 38 embassies and diplomatic missions, the targets of "US espionage.".
Countries on the list include France, Italy and Greece, as well as non European U.S. allies such as Japan, South Korea and India.
EU missions and embassies in New York and Washington were also monitored, and the article was approved.
Snowden's documents show a very wide range of "spying techniques for intercepting communications.". It includes a telephone bugger, a special antenna and a device for intercepting wired communication.