Document Shows That It Was Non Nsa, Only Fbi That Monitored Five Americans

(Updated: August 18, 2016)

Three days ago, on July 9, 2014, Glenn Greenwald published an article which he before announced equally beingness the grand finale of the Snowden-revelations. It would demonstrate that NSA is also spying on ordinary American citizens, something that would clearly move illegal.

The study is titled "media got the impression that this was the long-awaited major NSA abuse scandal.

But equally nosotros volition demo here, the document that was published contains no evidence of whatsoever interest of the NSA inwards this item case. Everything indicates that it was truly an FBI operation, as well as so it seems non justified to receive got NSA mentioned inwards the article.

The FISA spreadsheet

Greenwald's study is all close a spreadsheet titled "FISA recap" - which refers to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) from 1978. This police clitoris allows electronic surveillance of Americans who are suspected of espionage or terrorism.

The spreadsheet contains 7485 e-mail addresses that were evidently monitored nether FISA potency betwixt 2002 as well as 2008. Unfortunately the article doesn't say whether the addresses are all from American e-mail providers or that some of them are foreign.

We produce know that 202 (or 3%) of these e-mail addresses belong to a "US person", 1782 (or 24%) to a "Non-US person" as well as of 5501 (or 73%) addresses the nationality of the user is unknown:

Part of a spreadsheat titled "FISA recap" showing e-mail addresses monitored
betwixt 2002 as well as 2008. The tabular array seems to move ordered yesteryear expiration date
(click to enlarge)

In this sample, in that location are eight e-mail addresses where the nationality is marked equally "US Person" as well as except for one, these are all nether responsibleness of FBI. Of the 12 marked "Non-US Person", iv are nether responsibleness of the CIA, vii nether the NSA as well as 1 has no responsible agency.

FBI Case Notations

Each entry inwards the listing has a unique Case Notation starting amongst XX.SQF followed yesteryear 6 numbers. Greenwald states that such a instance notation starting amongst XX.SQF is "assigned to all “FISA accounts” equally a unique identifier" as well as points to a slide titled "FISA dataflow" equally evidence for that:

Slide showing "FISA dataflow". It's unclear why the Case Notation format
has been partially redacted, as well as PALMCARTE is also non explained.
NAC presumably stands for NSA's Network Analysis Center.
(date unknown)

But inwards a piffling known NSA document (pdf) from 2006, which was published on March 11, 2014 yesteryear The New York Times, nosotros run across that XX.SQF is truly the prefix for FBI FISA data. It also says that US-984J is a SIGINT Activity Designator (SIGAD) which denotes FBI collection.

Data collected yesteryear NSA nether FISA potency is identified yesteryear the SIGAD US-984*, inwards which the asterisk is a placeholder for additional suffixes (other than a J), similar for illustration inwards US-984XN, which is the SIGAD for NSA's famous PRISM program.

So, the prefix XX.SQF isn't used for "all FISA accounts" equally Greenwald wants us to believe, but simply for those from the FBI. The 2006 document doesn't say what prefix is used for NSA data, but from the PRISM-presentation nosotros know that communications collected yesteryear NSA through PRISM are identified yesteryear the trigraph SQC.

Analogue to the way the PRISM instance notations are composed, a instance notation from the spreadsheet, similar for illustration XX.SQF055191 for the e-mail address of Asim Ghafoor breaks downwards into the next parts:

XX - This may stand upwards for Internet Service Providers
. (dot) - Indicating multiple types of content
SQF - Fixed trigraph denoting FBI FISA collection
05 - Year the Case Notation was established: 2005
5191 - Serial number of the targeted address

The FBI equally Responsible Agency

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 2nd purpose of the FBI becomes clear when nosotros hold off at the spreadsheet column for the "Responsible Agency". According to Greenwald's article, this column shows the federal agency that requested the monitoring of a item e-mail address. In the sample shown inwards a higher house nosotros run across that this tin either move FBI, NSA or CIA.

Most hitting is that for the e-mail addresses of all v Muslim-American leaders, the FBI is the responsible agency that requested their surveillance. This was also recognized inwards Greenwald's story, as well as it's of course of didactics just how it should be, equally it's officially upwards to the FBI to investigate American citizens as well as residents:

Excerpts of the FISA spreadsheet showing the entries for v Muslim-American leaders
The asterisk behind some of the post service addreses seems to
dot that collection has been terminated
(compilation yesteryear IC Off the record - click to enlarge)

As nosotros tin see, these entries for the v Americans comprise null that points to whatsoever sort of interest of the NSA. Instead, both the instance notation as well as the responsible agency dot that it were FBI operations.

Greenwald as well as his co-author Murtaza Hussain were asked on Twitter whether in that location mightiness move some additional evidence for the interest of the NSA, but they haven't responded to this question.

The entirely human relationship this listing has to the NSA, is that it was amid the Snowden-documents, but that tin also move easily explained yesteryear the fact that for many other entries the NSA is the responsible agency. The listing was most probable sent to all iii agencies equally a recap of which addresses were monitored on their behalf.

Given these considerations, it seems that the spreadsheet truly shows a large number of e-mail addresses that receive got been monitored yesteryear the FBI, as well as thence their instance notation starts amongst XX.SQF. This monitoring evidently took house partly for the FBI's ain investigations as well as partly on behalf of NSA as well as CIA, to whom the FBI would receive got passed the communications from the e-mail addresses they requested.

According to a Lawful Intercept (LI) equipment installed on their networks, inwards lodge to "perform electronic surveillance on an private target equally authorized yesteryear a judicial or administrative order", inwards this instance the FISA Court warrant.

The equipment filters cyberspace information packets based upon identifiers similar e-mail as well as IP addresses, which agency all kinds of communications that comprise a item e-mail address volition move pulled out as well as forwarded to the FBI's Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU). This method would also explicate why inwards all instance notations from the spreadsheet nosotros run across a dot, indicating that the collection resulted inwards multiple types of content.

Some people suggested that the authorities went to Yahoo as well as Google to instruct the messages from the Gmail.com as well as Yahoo.com e-mail domains (and retorically asked whether these companies did struggle the order), but that is unlikely. For the assistance of these sort of spider web service providers, NSA laid upwards the PRISM program, wich started inwards the autumn of 2007, as well as so entirely presently before the surveillance cases mentioned inwards the spreadsheet expired. Yahoo joined PRISM inwards March 2008 as well as Google inwards Jan 2009.

The NSA has similar filtering equipment installed at switches of major cyberspace backbone cables (for the so-called writes that Upstream collection from network switches also has instance notations that get amongst XX.SQF, because this sort of collection is "managed yesteryear the bureau as well as shared amongst NSA". This seems to move a error because it is mostly considered proven that Upstream interception is done yesteryear the NSA (for example: the Upstream slides don't call the FBI, as well as a PRISM slide says NSA has a straight human relationship amongst Upstream-providers).

There's a lot nosotros don't know

In trying to clarify what the spreadsheet tells us, I assumed for the sake of readability that the FBI truly intercepted, processed as well as stored messages from these v Muslim-American leaders. But inwards his article, Glenn Greenwald suggests that fifty-fifty that is non known for sure:

"Given that the government’s justifications for subjecting [these five] U.S. citizens to surveillance stay classified, it is impossible to know why their emails were monitored, or the extent of the surveillance. It is also unclear nether what legal potency it was conducted, whether the men were formally targeted nether FISA warrants, as well as what, if anything, authorities found that permitted them to hold spying on the men for prolonged periods of time."

What he says is that nosotros truly know hardly anything, except for the fact that the e-mail addresses of the men were found on the "FISA recap" list. Although the Muslim-leaders appear innocent of spying or acts related to terrorism, there's nonetheless the possibility that the FBI had skillful reasons to monitor them, but nosotros simply receive got no information close that.

In an ABC News report, anonymous erstwhile as well as electrical flow U.S. authorities officials said that the v men could move guilty or innocent or fifty-fifty cooperating amongst the authorities (for illustration yesteryear having agreed amongst monitoring their communications inwards lodge to collect evidence against suspects).

According to these officials, Snowden or Greenwald may good receive got misunderstood the spreadsheet as well as made incorrect interpretations. ABC farther noticed that the document was also curiously absent of the regular classification markings, but that is in all probability because the listing isn't inwards a .doc or a .pdf document, but inwards its master .xls spreadsheet file format.

Conclusion

Just similar many other documents from the Snowden-leaks that were misrepresented, the master file disclosed inwards this latest Greenwald slice contains no evidence that NSA had anything to produce amongst the monitoring of the v Muslim-American leaders. In fact, everything points to the FBI, but apart from that nosotros know equally good piffling close these cases to say whether the Bureau acted illegally or out of paranoia. However that may be, nosotros can't blame that on the NSA.

Update #1:
After an interview amongst Edward Snowden on May 5, 2015, Washington Post journalist Barton Gellman said that he himself wouldn't receive got published close this issue, because he saw non plenty evidence for the claims that Greenwald made inwards his article for The Intercept.

Update #2:
On August 15, 2016, the website The Intercept published a few documents from the Snowden trove showing that the NSA used PRISM to instruct information close a New Zealand citizen who GCSB believed was involved inwards a plot against the regime on the isle of Fiji, which turned out non to move the case.