Le logo Prism, issu d'un document de la NSA. DR

Lire l'article en Français : L'ampleur de l'espionnage mondial par la NSA

In the course of the summer, the documents forwarded to several of the media by Edward Snowden have contributed to lifting the veil on the extent of the surveillance and espionage carried out by the NSA, the American National Security Agency and its allies. Le Monde has now also had access to these documents.

Before the summer, the NSA was the most secret of the American intelligence agencies. All that we knew was that it was responsible for the surveillance of communications with foreign countries and had become a key instrument in the intelligence and security of America after 11 September.

Then came Edward Snowden, today in exile in Russia for one year. Wishing to denounce ‘the biggest programme of arbitrary surveillance in human history', this 29 years old American, working for an NSA contractor acquired several tens of thousands of highly confidential documents.

At the beginning of June, the first secrets from the NSA contained in these documents began to filter out. The Guardian revealed that the telephone operator, Verizon, provided the NSA with telephone data from several million Americans in virtue of a top secret court order. Then, it was the turn of the Prism programme to be revealed. Since December 2007, this enables the American secret services, and in the first instance the NSA, to have special access to the data of nine major Internet firms, including Google, Facebook or Microsoft.

DOCUMENTS, E-MAILS, CHATS

An internal training manual on Prism, to which Le Monde also had access, explains how using a simple search function, the NSA analysts can search vast databases of Web giants, in search of documents, e-mails or on line chats. This is all within the legal framework of section 702 of the FISA Amendment Act, renewed under Obama, which dispenses the NSA from requesting an individual search warrant and enables a massive collection of data. The firms referred to by the documents have denied any involvement.

Alongside this instrument of targeted surveillance, the Snowden documents also enable us to shed a harsh light on another method of bulk collection by the NSA, known as Upstream. This system takes data directly from submarine cables and Internet infrastructures. This is a logical strategy, once you realize that 99% of world communication now transits by submarine routes. The British equivalent of the NSA, the GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) plays a prime role in this world-level American system of interceptions. The historical proximity of the United Kingdom and the United States, numerous confidential agreements and financial dependency of the secret services in London on those of Washington explain these bonds. There are also technical reasons. A considerable number of the submarine cables which link Europe to America go through the United Kingdom. Thanks to Edward Snowden, the Tempora programme which aims to ‘control the internet' by monitoring these cables has thus been revealed.

THE EXTREME PRECISION OF THE DATA COLLECTED

The interception by the GCHQ of the flows going under the seas has been made possible by agreements, which are secret, made with the firms managing these cables. All this comes under a law, passed thirteen years ago, which does not prevent British spies from acceding to the data of their fellow citizens and to all the data of the users who go through the bottle neck under the watchful eye of the British. In a document introducing Tempora, presented by the Guardian, we read: "You are in an enviable position, have fun and get the best out of it." In the course of a page of the introductory manual to the Prism programme, we finally discover that Upstream is also based on four programmes (Blarney, Fairview, Oakstar and Stormbrew) about which, to date, we only know the main lines. Fairview, for example, is apparently concerned to a large extent with the interception of telephone conversations via the major American operators. According to the Washington Post, on the basis of the Snowden documents, in 2013, 278 million dollars (394 million in 2011) were paid, by the United States, to firms managing the cables and Internet infrastructures as compensation for their secret cooperation.

Confronted with this mass of intercepted data, numerous instruments are used to sort or to break the encryption codes of the systems under surveillance; the Bullrun programmes permits this. Very powerful search techniques are required. One of its tools is called XKeyscore and its working was set out in the columns of the Guardian, on 31 July. The extreme precision of the data collected is clearly visible. Thanks to XKeyscore, analysts can accede to the content of e-mails sent, the list of internet sites visited by their target, and even to the key words used by the target in search engines. All this can, when necessary, be done in real time.

The framework for this research is not restrictive, explains the Guardian, which states that numerous data concerning Americans are thus made accessible to agents. According to the introductory manual which seemed to be primarily destined to promoting the capacities of the instrument, 300 terrorists had been captured using intelligence from XKeyscore.

The NSA and the GCHQ do not only devote their very considerable means of surveillance to combating terrorism. The Snowden documents have also demonstrated that the two agencies have no hesitation in indulging in the espionage of allied countries. At the G20 meeting in London in 2009, the computers of the diplomats and heads of state participating were monitored by the GCHQ as were some of their telephone calls. A common practice since during the meeting of the G20 Ministers of Finance in September 2009 in London, 45 British analysts had access to the live content of the calls made at the location of the meeting.

Lire : Comment la NSA espionne la France

The NSA for its part has concentrated on the European Union (EU), as the Spiegel revealed, always on the basis of the Snowden documents. The NSA planted spyware in the European Union offices in Washington and infiltrated its IT network. The EU delegation to UNO in New York, as well as the building of the Council of the European Union in Brussels were also scrutinized by the NSA. Brazil is also one of the countries which has been a victim of this espionage. If we are to believe the documents circulated by the Brazilian media group, O Globo, its political leaders, along with some firms, have been targeted.

The Snowden documents have breached the world of Western secrecy which demonstrates the considerable efforts implemented by the United States to eavesdrop on the Internet – the place where the majority of world communications have now moved to, in a legal framework which is sometimes vague and, in most cases, quite remote from real democratic discussion. Questioned by Le Monde, the American authorities assured us that the Prism programme had been debated in parliament in the United States and that it functioned in a strictly regulated legal framework. Questioned on 12 September, about the revelations of the ex-consultant, James Clapper, national head of American intelligence, replied that for his part: ‘I hate to have to recognize it but what has happened – and what is harmful – has led to conversation and a debate which were in fact probably necessary'.

Read our English coverage of the NSA revelations : Fighting ‘Big Brother'