In the continuing saga of exposes on the US National Security Agency’s far-reaching global surveillance operations, it has now been revealed that the agency had secretly broken into the main communication links connecting Yahoo and Google data centres around the world.
Citing documents obtained from whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the NSA, working with British intelligence agency GCHQ, has positioned itself to collect information from hundreds of millions of email accounts.
In just one month, ending January 9 this year, the NSA’s field collectors had processed more than 180 million new records, the report said, quoting from a top-secret accounting of NSA’s acquisitions directorate that reportedly sends millions of records every day from the Yahoo and Google networks to the agency’s data warehouses at Fort Meade, Maryland.
The NSA, however, sought to deny the allegations, asserting that the IT giants “work with us” in terms of court orders. “This is not NSA breaking into any databases. It would be illegal for us to do that. So, I don’t know what the report is. But I can tell you factually we do not have access to Google servers, Yahoo servers. We go through a court order,” said NSA director Army Gen. Keith Alexander.
The new revelations triggered immediate concern at Google and Yahoo headquarters. Google’s Chief legal Officer David Drummond said the company has “long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping”. “We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform,” he said. Yahoo spokeswoman Sarah Meron said the company has strict controls in place to protect the security of its data centres. “We have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency,” she said, adding it was too early to speculate on whether legal action would be taken..
The operation disclosed in the Post report is code named MUSCUlAR, and is said to be operated jointly by the NSA and Britain’s GCHQ. The two agencies copy data flowing through fibre-optic network cables overseas, and the NSA sends millions of the records from Yahoo and Google to its data warehouses in Maryland.
As the NSA operation of the programme takes place overseas, there is no US oversight and the operation is out of the reach of the court, said the report. Alexander, however, refuted the contention, saying a court order must be issued to the Internet companies. “We issue that court order to them through the FBI. And it’s not millions, it’s thousands that are done. And it’s almost all against terrorism and other things like that. It has nothing to do with U.S. persons,” he said.
This programme, according to the Post, is different from PRISM, a separate data-gathering programme that uses a court order to compel Yahoo, Google and other Internet companies to provide certain data. “It allows the NSA to reach into the companies’ data streams and grab emails, video chats, pictures and more,” the report noted.