Hackers affiliated with the Anonymous collective have leaked a US Department of Defense memo relating to the PRISM program, revealing that the National Security Agency has secretly gathered intelligence on millions of Americans for years.
The hacktivists, who have long sought complete transparency
online and elsewhere, published a total of thirteen documents,
one of which outlines the US government’s “NetOps Strategic
Vision” for monitoring the Internet.
The documents are mostly pulled from 2008, just after when the
government reportedly began using PRISM to mine servers at
technology companies including Microsoft and Yahoo. An NSA
slideshow published Thursday by the Guardian and the Washington
Post reveals the intelligence community first gained access to
Google in January of 2009 and Facebook in June of the same year.
“NetOps will transform along with the Global Information Grid
to dynamically support new warfighting, intelligence, and
business processes and enable users to access and share trusted
information in a timely manner,” one document states.
“The future Global Information Grid will result in a richer
Net-Centric information environment comprised of shared services
and capabilities based on advanced technologies."
“It will be heavily reliant on end-to-end virtual networks to
interconnect anyone, anywhere, at any time with any type of
information through voice, video, images, or text. It will also
be faced with greater security threats that NetOps must help
address.”
Much of the leak contains vague language that outlines the
desired goals of the “NetOps Vision,” not details on how
surveillance is conducted or the individuals or groups targeted
by the NSA. At least a section of Friday’s information dump was
previously made available by the government, according to
technology news site ZD Net, which found the data on
Web.Archive.org.
Anonymous, however, reminded readers to share the documents before the figurative “they” try to make them disappear.
“Anonymous has obtained some documents that ‘they’ do not want
you to see, and much to ‘their’ chagrin, we have found them, and
are giving them to you,” the poster writes. “This is
happening in over 35 countries and done in cooperation with
private businesses, and intelligence partners worldwide. We bring
this to you so that you know just how little rights you
have.”