Surveillance
Edward Snowden's disclosures from June 2013 put the other side of the field on the record: PRISM, the scale of collection, and the tooling in the NSA ANT catalogue. It reframed security as a question about governments as well as criminals.
Part of Cybersecurity
17 moments in this segment.
- — NSA headquarters, Fort Meade, from the air. Trevor Paglen's aerial photograph of NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, released CC0. It stands in for the institutional side of the story: the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Computer Security Act of 1987, and the agency that would sit at the centre of the crypto wars and the 2013 disclosures. Ronald Reagan dedicated the new NSA operations buildings in September 1986. The subject dates from 1986; the photograph itself is later.
- — Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, 6 June 2013. Edward Snowden photographed by Laura Poitras at the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong during the interview that introduced him to the world. The disclosures that began that week documented PRISM, XKeyscore, bulk metadata collection and the deliberate weakening of cryptographic standards. It is the single most consequential security story of the period.
- — The PRISM cover slide. The cover slide of the NSA's internal PRISM briefing, published on 6 June 2013, listing the nine providers whose data the programme reached. Its clip-art design became famous precisely because it looked so mundane. As a US government work it is public domain.
- — Snowden interviewed by Glenn Greenwald in Hong Kong. The Guardian's filmed interview in which Edward Snowden explains to Glenn Greenwald why he leaked NSA documents, including the line about not wanting to live in a society that does these sorts of things. It is the primary on-camera source for his stated motives.
- — The Guardian on questions raised by the NSA revelations. Guardian journalist Nick Hopkins sets out the open questions raised by the latest documents from Edward Snowden, including how much money passed between agencies. A short newsroom piece from the middle of the disclosure sequence.
- — Report on the NSA collecting email and messaging contact lists. A news report on the Washington Post's story that the NSA had been collecting contact lists from personal email and instant messaging accounts, based on documents provided by Edward Snowden. One of the many distinct programmes revealed during 2013.
- — Edward Snowden identified as the source of the NSA leaks. An ABC News webcast reporting that Edward Snowden had come forward as the source behind the NSA disclosures. It marks the moment the story acquired a name and a face.
- — PRISM tasking process slide. The slide describing how an analyst tasked a PRISM selector and how the request flowed through the FBI's interception unit to the provider. Useful when the archive needs to show mechanism rather than outrage.
- — Snowden receives the Sam Adams award, Moscow, 9 October 2013. Snowden in Moscow in October 2013 accepting the Sam Adams award for Intelligence Integrity, his first appearance after leaving the Hong Kong hotel. It marks the transition from source to exile.
- — BBC explainer on what Snowden revealed. An illustrated BBC News explainer summarising what the Snowden documents alleged, made at the end of 2013. Useful as a contemporaneous summary of how the revelations were being understood at the time.
- — NSA ANT catalogue page: JETPLOW implant for Cisco firewalls. A page from the NSA's ANT catalogue, published in December 2013, describing JETPLOW, a persistent firmware implant for Cisco PIX and ASA firewalls. It is the plainest evidence that the security appliance industry's own products were systematically subverted. US government work, public domain.
- — Vanity Fair's animated account of the Snowden affair. An animated condensation of Vanity Fair's long-form article on Edward Snowden, framing the argument over whether he was a whistleblower or a traitor. A retrospective made less than a year after the leaks began.
- — Tobias Engel on locating and tracking phones through SS7. A talk at the 31st Chaos Communication Congress showing how the SS7 signalling network can be used to locate a phone number to within tens of metres, intercept traffic and manipulate subscribers. It made telecom signalling security a mainstream concern.
- — Snowden revelations honoured at the Crunchies awards. Trevor Timm accepts a social impact award on behalf of Edward Snowden at the 2013 Crunchies, with the ceremony tied to an internet protest against mass surveillance. A snapshot of how parts of the technology industry positioned themselves after the leaks.
- — The NSA Utah Data Center, Bluffdale. The NSA's Utah Data Center photographed from an EFF airship in June 2014. Built to store bulk collection at exabyte scale, it became the physical symbol of the Snowden disclosures. Released CC0 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
- — Jennifer Granick's Black Hat keynote on threat modeling and constitutional law. Granick, a civil-liberties lawyer, argues that constitutional doctrine models threats badly: it trusts the wrong insiders, overreacts to outsiders, and adapts slowly. A keynote about the legal architecture that surrounds surveillance and computer crime rather than about the technology.
- — Citizen Lab's Black Hat keynote on twenty years of counter-intelligence research. A keynote drawing on two decades of Citizen Lab investigations at the University of Toronto into state cyber-espionage and the mercenary spyware industry that sells to governments. The lab's work is the main public evidence base for spyware found on the phones of journalists and activists.
