Snowden Leaks

US Government document from 2010 part of the Snowden leaks and sharing agreements with the UK. The Five Eyes program of the English speaking world (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) use social media for “propaganda,” “deception,” “mass messaging,” “pushing stories”, and "discrediting” the intelligence agencies' enemies with false information spread online.^[1]

• Snowden leaks details a program that trained approximately 10,000 jihadi fighters at a cost of $1 billion a year.^[2]
• A secret memo exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden^[3] discusses how the US, along with British intelligence, is collecting information “directly from the servers of …Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”^[4]
• The Guardian story, soon to be known as the Snowden leaks, is more evidence Obama Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper misled Congress and public about the true nature and extent of domestic intelligence gathering in his 12 March 2013 sworn testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
• Training materials provided by Snowden for XKeyscore program detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous NSA databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed. The program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata. Under US law, the NSA is required to obtain an individualized FISA warrant only if the target of their surveillance is a 'US person', though no such warrant is required for intercepting the communications of Americans with foreign targets. But XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known. ^[5]
• Snowden reveals intelligence sharing on Britain's GCHQ (its intelligence agency) intercepting phone and internet communications of foreign politicians attending two G-20 meetings in London in 2009.

• Snowden leaks top-secret procedures steps the NSA must take to target and collect data from "non-US persons" and how it must minimize, or mask, data collected on US citizens.^[6]

• Snowden leaks how Britain's GCHQ taps fiber-optic cables to collect and store global email messages, Facebook posts, internet histories, and calls, and then shares the data with the NSA.
• Snowden leaks reveal Britain's GCHQ and other European spy agencies work together to conduct mass surveillance. The files also make clear that GCHQ played a leading role in advising its European counterparts how to work around laws intended to restrict the surveillance power of intelligence agencies. The Guardian article reports,^[7]
  

  Edward Snowden warned of such abuse played out in 2016 and 2017: an Executive branch with unlimited. unrestrained power to spy on investigative Committees of Congress, political opponents, and even the Supreme Court.

• NBC reports UK's GCHQ used "dirty tricks" such as computer viruses and sexual "honey traps" to target adversaries (see Obama war crimes, 27 October 2009).^[8]
• Snowden reveals GCHQ asked NSA for "unsupervised access" to NSA's databases.
• British Secretive Court ruled NSA-UK sharing of bulk metadata before December 2014 was illegal, however, after the Snowden leaks, now that the practice is publicly known, US-UK intelligence metadata sharing is legal.^[9] Legal intelligence sharing with foreign agencies is a convenient way for law enforcement in both countries to circumvent constitutional restrictions and obtain information without probable cause or a search warrant. Under a reciprocal agreement, the US can ask the UK to spy on a US citizen or vice-versa (as in the case of Lady Diana Spencer) as a national security prerogative. The UK doesn't need a warrant in the US, nor the US in the UK, and a person's civil rights may be "legally" violated under this loophole. The practice was originated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 by Executive Order allowing British intelligence to wiretap American citizens that Britain feared were monitoring ships leaving harbor in New York and New Jersey, making them vulnerable to U-boats.^[10]

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