Hackers affiliated with the Anonymous collective have leaked a US Department of Defense memo relating to the PRISM program, revealing that the National Security Agency has secretly gathered intelligence on millions of Americans for years.

The hacktivists, who have long sought complete transparency online and elsewhere, published a total of thirteen documents, one of which outlines the US government’s “NetOps Strategic Vision” for monitoring the Internet.



The documents are mostly pulled from 2008, just after when the government reportedly began using PRISM to mine servers at technology companies including Microsoft and Yahoo. An NSA slideshow published Thursday by the Guardian and the Washington Post reveals the intelligence community first gained access to Google in January of 2009 and Facebook in June of the same year.



“NetOps will transform along with the Global Information Grid to dynamically support new warfighting, intelligence, and business processes and enable users to access and share trusted information in a timely manner,” one document states.



“The future Global Information Grid will result in a richer Net-Centric information environment comprised of shared services and capabilities based on advanced technologies."









“It will be heavily reliant on end-to-end virtual networks to interconnect anyone, anywhere, at any time with any type of information through voice, video, images, or text. It will also be faced with greater security threats that NetOps must help address.”



Much of the leak contains vague language that outlines the desired goals of the “NetOps Vision,” not details on how surveillance is conducted or the individuals or groups targeted by the NSA. At least a section of Friday’s information dump was previously made available by the government, according to technology news site ZD Net, which found the data on Web.Archive.org.



Anonymous, however, reminded readers to share the documents before the figurative “they” try to make them disappear.

“Anonymous has obtained some documents that ‘they’ do not want you to see, and much to ‘their’ chagrin, we have found them, and are giving them to you,” the poster writes. “This is happening in over 35 countries and done in cooperation with private businesses, and intelligence partners worldwide. We bring this to you so that you know just how little rights you have.”

