'I can't see how this activity could have been properly authorised under FISA. 'Under there are numerous places where it says you shouldn't be targeting people on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment,' says Kurt Opsahl, deputy general counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The system also conducts deep-packet inspection of emails that users exchange with the Tor anonymising service to obtain information that Tor conveys to users of so-called Tor 'bridges.' Legal experts say the widespread targeting of people engaged in constitutionally protected activity like visiting web sites and reading articles, raises questions about the legal authority the NSA is using to track users in this way. The source code, for the NSA system known as XKeyscore, is used in the collection and analysis of internet traffic, and reveals that simply searching the web for privacy tools online is enough to get the NSA to label you an 'extremist' and target your IP address for inclusion in its database.īut the NSA's analysis isn't limited to tracking metadata like IP addresses. This is according to code, obtained and analysed by journalists and others in Germany, which for the first time reveals the extent of some of the wide-spread tracking the NSA conducts on people using or interested in using privatising tools and services - a list that includes journalists and their sources, human rights activists, political dissidents living under oppressive countries and many others who have various reasons for needing to shield their identity and their online activity. There's also a good chance you've been tagged for simply reading news articles about these services published by Wired and other sites.

If you use Tor or any of a number of other privacy services online or even visit their web sites to read about the services, there's a good chance your IP address has been collected and stored by the NSA, according to top-secret source code for a programme the NSA uses to conduct internet surveillance. NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland Wikimedia Commons

Xkeyscore search data