NSA Collecting Hundreds Of Millions Of Text Messages Daily, Looking At 'Untargeted' Messages & Data

from the collect-it-all dept

Thu, Jan 16th 2014 11:57am — Mike Masnick

The latest in the ongoing revelations for the Ed Snowden leaks is that the NSA and GCHQ are collecting what appears to be hundreds of millions of text messages every day. While it does try to "minimize" messages involving Americans, it appears to allow access to the rest of the database to the GCHQ in the UK, who does use it to spy on UK phone numbers. GCHQ staff are told to avoid viewing actual content of UK text messages, but it's unclear if that's enforced. As the NSA notes, this database, called DISHFIRE, is "a goldmine to exploit."

And, yes, they're exploiting it. And no, not just against "targets."

The NSA has made extensive use of its vast text message database to extract information on people’s travel plans, contact books, financial transactions and more – including of individuals under no suspicion of illegal activity.

The NSA runs a program called "Prefer" across all the information in the database to turn up "gems" that it admits "are not in current metadata stores and would enhance current analytics."

The NSA sure does like its smiley faces, doesn't it? Among the data they're able to access? Each day this data gives them details of "over 800,000 financial transactions, either through text-to-text payments or linking credit cards to phone users." It also tracks travel information from things like itinerary texts as well as cancellations and delays. Thought it was nice that your airline informed you of your flight delay? Sounds like the NSA got to know about it too.

It's not entirely clear from the report how the NSA/GCHQ are getting access to these messages. Reporters spoke to Vodafone, who insisted that they were not handing over such data, but these days, you never know who's being truthful. In response to all of this, the NSA repeated its nearly impossible to believe claim that its "activities are focused and specifically deployed against -- and only against -- valid foreign intelligence targets in response to intelligence requirements." Valid foreign intelligence targets send 200 million text messages a day? Yeah...

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Filed Under: gchq, nsa, sms, surveillance, text messages

24 Comments

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Reader Comments

The First Word

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This is how the world ends.

Not with a whimper.

But with a smiley face.

—Alana

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ofb2632 (profile), 16 Jan 2014 @ 12:01pm

An easy way to mess with the NSA
Wouldn't it be great if everyone in the USA put the following keywords in every email and text. Bomb, NSA Blow up. The NSA servers would overheat.
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- Anonymous Coward, 16 Jan 2014 @ 1:19pm
  
  Re: An easy way to mess with the NSA
  I used to do this with an auto response sent to the address of every email I received along with a creative introduction I'd crafted. I say "used to" because I just checked and it's mysteriously disappeared. hm.
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- John Fenderson (profile), 16 Jan 2014 @ 1:36pm
  
  Re: An easy way to mess with the NSA
  Back in a Good Old Days of the internet, this was extremely common practice. Such terms were included in sig blocks (remember those?) and were called "spook food". Everything old becomes new again.
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- Anonymous Coward, 16 Jan 2014 @ 4:35pm
  
  Re: An easy way to mess with the NSA
  now they have given up the ruse that its metadata and that they are mining financial and other information from text messages. I find it disturbing that some future policy may deem this content to be usable for identifying financial fraud, narcotics investigations, theft or extramarital affairs to blackmail or jail masses of the population. And we just have their words that "they won't do it"? So we're supposed to trust them, while they don't trust any of us and keep spying on everyone.
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Irving, 16 Jan 2014 @ 12:02pm

Quick! Somebody set up a petition! That'll stop them right in their tracks!
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arcan, 16 Jan 2014 @ 12:04pm

someone needs to ddos them. get to the terabit/sec range. hopefully cloudflare and the other anti-ddos services would refuse to work with them.
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- KoD (profile), 16 Jan 2014 @ 12:21pm
  
  Re:
  I would seriously hope that the NSA would not need a third party vendor for netsec... Then again, I guess NEED and WANT to pay their buddies companies some money are not the same thing...
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Jan 2014 @ 12:24pm

the same A5/1 exploit technology gives you SMS as well as voice; it would not be remotely difficult to set up an industrial scale intercept/cracking network across most countries and/or continents - just expensive.

Assuming 'incidental' means "americans traveling outside the US" I don't think this is problematic in terms of the goals of the NSA.
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- Anonymous Coward, 16 Jan 2014 @ 12:44pm
  
  Re:
  Assuming 'incidental' means "americans traveling outside the US" I don't think this is problematic in terms of the goals of the NSA.
  
  But it one hell of a problem for everybody else.
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- Anonymous Coward, 16 Jan 2014 @ 12:53pm
  
  Re:
  I think you're being somewhat optimistic about what they might consider incidental. If the NSA had to grab every last Amercian's data to get data for the whole world, they'd still consider the American data to be "incidental".
  
  Still, this revelation is more focused on the UK and the GCHQ, which is handily storing all the UK citizen's data, ripe for abuse.
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krolork (profile), 16 Jan 2014 @ 12:35pm

We need a revolution.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Jan 2014 @ 12:47pm

AC commenter #5 brings exactly the point I came to make comment on. We've admissions either through Snowden's documents or through accusations and counter responses that these spying agencies are vacuuming up undersea fiber communications. We have administrations that pretty much all metadata is being collected. Here it is again lined out that the A5/1 data is being mined for the contents of text data. So how long is it till it's revealed that not only is the metadata recorded but also the vocal contents of your conversations on cell phones?

The NSA says it doesn't do that. Can you really at this stage believe that?
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Jan 2014 @ 1:29pm

But. Pirates.
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- jlddodger, 16 Jan 2014 @ 2:49pm
  
  I'll fix that for you
  Butt Pirates.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Jan 2014 @ 2:13pm

"Valid foreign intelligence targets send 200 million text messages a day?"

Your average teenage girl probably does.
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- Anonymous Coward, 17 Jan 2014 @ 3:37am
  
  Re:
  So you're saying that average teenage girls are valid foreign intelligence targets? This is getting scary.....
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Jan 2014 @ 2:15pm

wow, 200 million terrorists, blimey /s

I wonder how many "level headed" ...."ana"-"ly-zers", feel like their in a movie with this never before new age surveilance, talking overly fast, communicating as quickly as possible, illegaly surveyed information, to a "team" physicaly in contact with the "target".......not caring whether that person has ACTUALLY done anything wrong, within the boundaries of our rights........nahhhh
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Abby, 16 Jan 2014 @ 2:57pm

WTH?
Am I reading that slide correctly? Over 6 million SIM card changes daily out of how many phones? We just busted one per person, planet wide. I imagine those who think this dodge works use many more than one once a day.

That's a lot of political oppression on the planet or lots of us have something we prefer remain our business. Both, really. Obviously, piracy is part of it, but we eliminate that at the cost of the politically oppressed. Nothing can undermine a dictatorial leadership more than pirated video!

I guess it's why no carriers have prevented this backdoor access seen years ago and flagged by technical privacy guardians.

If we find out providers were complicit or willfully negligent in allowing all this intrusion, we're gonna need a truth and reconciliation resolution or the haystacks will collapse.

We'll stick our virtual pitchforks in those stacks and call this needle hunt done. Game over, tech sector. Peasants quit. Find for your own snails.

Anyone want my Smith Corona 210 Automatic? Sounds like a humming gun when plugged in for typing, but IBM's Selectric frequencies are already known to NSA. Useless on silent missions unless folks think a fracking clacker isn't suspicious. It's almost comically loud when cracking off.
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Alana (profile), 16 Jan 2014 @ 3:10pm

This is how the world ends.

Not with a whimper.

But with a smiley face.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Jan 2014 @ 5:09pm

I'd want redaction as well!
I'd bet a nickel the redacted text is the names of the evil sobs responsible.
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Dell, 16 Jan 2014 @ 6:41pm

OK, I want an explanation from somebody.

At statistical 5% failure rate for first year of any hard drive' life, how much they missing?

Who gets info on gay porn preferences of Justice Scalia?
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DerivedVariable, 17 Jan 2014 @ 2:42am

My favourite bit there is "Metacontent"
I really like the use of "Metacontent" as in "Message Content" in the second slide. Yeah, let's just put meta in front to add to general confusion and hopefully mislead a few souls about what we're actually capturing.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Jan 2014 @ 6:26am

this is so far out of hand the only way to stop it would be to shut down the nsa and its contracts completely .
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Jan 2014 @ 4:23am

The NSA seems to be hinting strongly that they intent to start bulk searching/analyzing, the contents of 200 million text messages per day. Attempting to find these so-called "gems".

I doubt all those gems are going to be solely terrorist related. In fact, I fully expect the scope of these gems to only widen over time.

Eventually, encompassing those who disagree with the current administration's views and policies. The history of the human race proves this fact to be self evident.
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