
Journalists and security researchers who analysed the tools' source code. It's a one-stop-shop for access to the NSA's information. XKeyscore is a sophisticated search tool of the NSA, which allows exploring. Any laptop that you're tracking: you can follow it as it moves from place to place throughout the world. Any computer that an individual sits at: You can watch it. Any website: You can watch traffic to and from it. In January of 2014, Edward Snowden told an interviewer that using the XKeyscore program, an NSA operative could "read anyone's email in the world, anybody you've got an email address for.
Xkeyscore search tool full#
There are indications that NSA may be collecting not only the metadata of the people on the list, but also read their email exchanges with Tor and even analyse the full content of the connections they intercept. Merely visiting the websites of Tor or Tails is enough to put your IP on a tracking list. The notes describe Tails as "a comsec mechanism advocated by extremists on extremist forums." Ironically, Tor was originally created for the US Navy, and still receives a major part of its funding from the US government.
Xkeyscore search tool software#
According to programmers notes in the source code, one piece of code "identifies users searching for the TAILs (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) software program, viewing documents relating to TAILs,or viewing websites that detail TAILs."
Xkeyscore search tool portable#
The NSA is also tracking anyone using the private portable operating system Tails. It seems instead they've just banked on tracking everyone who uses it. The NSA has made considerable efforts in the past to crack the encryption protocols behind Tor (opens in new tab), but to limited success. The final relay decrypts the innermost layer of encryption and sends the original data to its destination without revealing, or even knowing, the source IP address. Xkeyscore is the NSA tool to search everyones emails, online chats and browsing histories ApAugby Brian Wang The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its widest-reaching system for developing intelligence from the internet. Each relay decrypts a layer of encryption to reveal only the next relay in the circuit. Tor encrypts data, including the destination IP address, multiple times and sends it through a virtual circuit made up of successive, randomly selected relays. Tor works by piling up layers of encryption over data, nested like the layers of an onion, which gave the network its original name, The Onion Router (TOR). XKeyscore (XKS) is the search engine interface that interacts with all NSA federated databases for the collected Internet traffic, communicated data and phone metadata of private citizens.
