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Boundless Informant

January 31, 2023

Boundless Informant (stylized as BOUNDLESSINFORMANT) is a big data analysis and data visualization tool used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA). It gives NSA managers summaries of the NSA's worldwide data collection activities by counting metadata.[1] The existence of this tool was disclosed by documents leaked by Edward Snowden, who worked at the NSA for the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.[2] Those disclosed documents were in a direct contradiction to the NSA's assurance to United States Congress that it does not collect any type of data on millions of Americans.[3]

History

Intelligence gathered by the United States government inside the United States or specifically targeting US citizens is legally required to be gathered in compliance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) and under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court).[4][5][6]

NSA global data mining projects have existed for decades, but recent programs of intelligence gathering and analysis that include data gathered from inside the United States such as PRISM were enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under President Obama in December 2012.[7]

Boundless Informant was first publicly revealed on June 8, 2013, after classified documents about the program were leaked to The Guardian.[1][8] This report contained a Top Secret heat map produced by the Boundless Informant program summarizing data records from 504 separate DNR and DNI collection sources or SIGADs. In the map, countries that are under surveillance are assigned a color from green to red (which does not correspond to intensity of surveillance).[9]

 
The worldwide heat map from the NSA's data visualisation tool BOUNDLESSINFORMANT, showing that during a 30-day period, 97 billion internet data records (DNI) and 124 billion telephony data records (DNR) were collected.

As this map shows that almost 3 billion data elements from inside the United States were captured by the NSA over a 30-day period ending in March 2013, Snowden stated that this tool was collecting more information on Americans located within the United States than on Russians in Russia.[10] Snowden stated that he had raised concerns about this with his superiors at the NSA beginning in October 2012, specifically with two superiors in the Hawaii regional base of the NSA Threat Operations Center and two superiors in the Technology Directorate of the NSA, Snowden claims that he brought up these concerns through the Dissent Channel.[10]

Snowden added that coworkers often were "astonished to learn" about this detail and did not wish to know any more about the program, and that until April 2012 he often asked these colleagues "What do you think the public would do if this was on the front page?"[10] Vanee Vines, an NSA spokesperson, stated that "After extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowden's contention that he brought these matters to anyone's attention."[10]

The first publication about Boundless Informant was followed by screenshots from this program showing charts with details about the data that NSA allegedly collected from several European countries between December 10, 2012 and January 8, 2013. These charts were published by a major news outlet from each of these countries:

 
Screenshot from the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool, showing charts with different details about data collection related to Germany. The upper chart shows internet (blue bars) and telephony (green bars) data, the bottom center chart mentions two SIGADs and the most important "tech" in the bottom right section is the XKeyscore program.
  • July 29, 2013: Germany: a big chart about this country, showing more than 552 million telephony and internet data, alongside four smaller charts about the Netherlands, France, Spain and Italy were published by the magazine Der Spiegel.[11]
  • October 20, 2013: France: a chart showing almost 70 million telephony metadata was published by the newspaper Le Monde.
  • October 28, 2013: Spain: a chart showing 60 million telephony metadata was published by the newspaper El Mundo.[12]
  • November 19, 2013: Norway: a chart showing 33 million telephony metadata was published by the tabloid paper Dagbladet.[13]
  • December 6, 2013: Italy: a chart showing almost 46 million telephony metadata was published by the tabloid paper L'Espresso.[14]
  • February 8, 2014: Netherlands: a chart showing 1.8 million telephony metadata was published by the newspaper NRC Handelsblad.[15]

Initially, these media wrote that the BoundlessInformant charts showed how many phone calls the NSA intercepted from a particular country. A first correction of this interpretation is that the program doesn't count the content of phone calls, but only the metadata thereof (see below).

A second correction is about by whom and where these data were collected. On August 5, a week after the publication of a chart from BoundlessInformant in Germany, the German intelligence agency (BND) said that they collected these data from foreign communications, related to military operations abroad.[16][17] A similar statement was made by the Norwegian Intelligence Service, after a chart about Norway was published on November 19.[18] On February 4, 2014, the Dutch government revealed that the 1.8 million metadata in the chart about the Netherlands were not collected by NSA, but instead by the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD), also to support military operations, which almost led to the resignation of the Dutch interior minister.[19]

On October 29, 2013, NSA-director Keith B. Alexander declared that accusations in French, Spanish and Italian media about NSA intercepting millions of phone calls from these countries are "completely false". He added that "This is not information that we collected on European citizens. It represents information that we and our NATO allies have collected in defense of our countries and in support of military operations."[20]

Technology

Although the initial reports in European media stated that the various charts presented the numbers of phone calls intercepted by NSA, a PowerPoint presentation and a FAQ document published by The Guardian[21] say that BoundlessInformant is counting and analysing DNI (internet) and DNR (telephony) metadata records passing through the NSA's signals intelligence systems, and are therefore not showing how much content of internet and telephone communications is intercepted.[22]

Data analyzed by Boundless Informant includes electronic surveillance program records and telephone call metadata records stored in an NSA data archive called GM-PLACE. It does not include FISA data, according to the FAQ memo. PRISM, a government codename for a collection effort known officially as US-984XN, which was revealed at the same time as Boundless Informant, is one source of DNR data.[9]

According to published slides, Boundless Informant leverages Free and Open Source Software—and is therefore "available to all NSA developers"—and corporate services hosted in the cloud. The tool uses HDFS, MapReduce, and Accumulo (formerly Cloudbase)[23] for data processing.[24]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill (June 8, 2013). "Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data". The Guardian. London. Retrieved June 12, 2013.
  2. ^ Greenwald, Glenn; MacAskill, Ewen; Poitras, Laura (June 9, 2013). "Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance". The Guardian. London. Retrieved June 9, 2013.
  3. ^ . Gawker. June 9, 2013. Archived from the original on March 20, 2014. Retrieved March 20, 2014.
  4. ^ Dean, John W. George W. Bush as the New Richard M. Nixon: Both Wiretapped Illegally, and Impeachable; Both Claimed That a President May Violate Congress' Laws to Protect National Security, FindLaw, December 30, 2005
  5. ^ The Impeachment of George W. Bush by Elizabeth Holtzman, The Nation, January 11, 2006
  6. ^ Adopted By The House Of Delegates (), American Bar Association, February 13, 2006
  7. ^ Greenwald, Glenn (June 6, 2013). "NSA taps in to internet giants' systems to mine user data, secret files reveal". The Guardian. London. Retrieved June 6, 2013.
  8. ^ "Boundless Informant | World news". The Guardian. London. June 8, 2013. Retrieved June 9, 2013.
  9. ^ a b "Boundless Informant NSA data-mining tool – four key slides". The Guardian. London. June 8, 2013. Retrieved June 9, 2013.
  10. ^ a b c d Gellman, Barton. "Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished." The Washington Post. December 23, 2013. Retrieved on February 7, 2014.
  11. ^ Daten aus Deutschland, August 5, 2013
  12. ^ Glenn Greenwald & German Aranda, La NSA espió 60 millones de llamadas en España en sólo un mes, October 28, 2013
  13. ^ Glenn Greenwald & Arne Halvorsen, USA overvåket 33 millioner norske mobilsamtaler, November 19, 2013
  14. ^ Glenn Greenwald & Stefania Maurizi, Da qui ci spiano gli americani, December 6, 2013.
  15. ^ Top Level Telecommunications, BOUNDLESSINFORMANT: metadata collection by Dutch MIVD instead of NSA, February 8, 2014
  16. ^ Der Spiegel, Mass Data: Transfers from Germany Aid US Surveillance, August 5, 2013
  17. ^ Marcel Rosenbach & Holger Stark, Der NSA Komplex, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, München 2014, p. 235 and 326.
  18. ^ Greenwald, Glenn (November 22, 2013). "NSA-files repeatedly show collection of data «against countries» - not «from»". dagbladet.no (in Norwegian). Retrieved April 28, 2021.
  19. ^ Top Level Telecommunications, Dutch government tried to hide the truth about metadata collection, February 17, 2014
  20. ^ Reuters.com, NSA chief defends agency amid U.S. spy rift with Europe September 24, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, October 29, 2013
  21. ^ "Boundless Informant: NSA explainer – full document text". The Guardian. London. June 8, 2013. Retrieved June 12, 2013.
  22. ^ Top Level Telecommunications, BOUNDLESSINFORMANT only shows metadata, October 22, 2013.
  23. ^ "NSA Mimics Google, Pisses Off Senate, Cade Metz". Wired. July 17, 2012.
  24. ^ "Boundless Informant slides". Documentcloud.org. Retrieved June 9, 2013.

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Boundless Informant.
  • Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data
  • Article about how BOUNDLESSINFORMANT only shows metadata
  • All BoundlessInformant documents, slides and screenshots

January 31, 2023
boundless, informant, stylized, boundlessinformant, data, analysis, data, visualization, tool, used, united, states, national, security, agency, gives, managers, summaries, worldwide, data, collection, activities, counting, metadata, existence, this, tool, dis. Boundless Informant stylized as BOUNDLESSINFORMANT is a big data analysis and data visualization tool used by the United States National Security Agency NSA It gives NSA managers summaries of the NSA s worldwide data collection activities by counting metadata 1 The existence of this tool was disclosed by documents leaked by Edward Snowden who worked at the NSA for the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton 2 Those disclosed documents were in a direct contradiction to the NSA s assurance to United States Congress that it does not collect any type of data on millions of Americans 3 Contents 1 History 2 Technology 3 See also 4 References 5 External linksHistory EditIntelligence gathered by the United States government inside the United States or specifically targeting US citizens is legally required to be gathered in compliance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 FISA and under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court FISA court 4 5 6 NSA global data mining projects have existed for decades but recent programs of intelligence gathering and analysis that include data gathered from inside the United States such as PRISM were enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under President Obama in December 2012 7 Boundless Informant was first publicly revealed on June 8 2013 after classified documents about the program were leaked to The Guardian 1 8 This report contained a Top Secret heat map produced by the Boundless Informant program summarizing data records from 504 separate DNR and DNI collection sources or SIGADs In the map countries that are under surveillance are assigned a color from green to red which does not correspond to intensity of surveillance 9 The worldwide heat map from the NSA s data visualisation tool BOUNDLESSINFORMANT showing that during a 30 day period 97 billion internet data records DNI and 124 billion telephony data records DNR were collected As this map shows that almost 3 billion data elements from inside the United States were captured by the NSA over a 30 day period ending in March 2013 Snowden stated that this tool was collecting more information on Americans located within the United States than on Russians in Russia 10 Snowden stated that he had raised concerns about this with his superiors at the NSA beginning in October 2012 specifically with two superiors in the Hawaii regional base of the NSA Threat Operations Center and two superiors in the Technology Directorate of the NSA Snowden claims that he brought up these concerns through the Dissent Channel 10 Snowden added that coworkers often were astonished to learn about this detail and did not wish to know any more about the program and that until April 2012 he often asked these colleagues What do you think the public would do if this was on the front page 10 Vanee Vines an NSA spokesperson stated that After extensive investigation including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co workers we have not found any evidence to support Mr Snowden s contention that he brought these matters to anyone s attention 10 The first publication about Boundless Informant was followed by screenshots from this program showing charts with details about the data that NSA allegedly collected from several European countries between December 10 2012 and January 8 2013 These charts were published by a major news outlet from each of these countries Screenshot from the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool showing charts with different details about data collection related to Germany The upper chart shows internet blue bars and telephony green bars data the bottom center chart mentions two SIGADs and the most important tech in the bottom right section is the XKeyscore program July 29 2013 Germany a big chart about this country showing more than 552 million telephony and internet data alongside four smaller charts about the Netherlands France Spain and Italy were published by the magazine Der Spiegel 11 October 20 2013 France a chart showing almost 70 million telephony metadata was published by the newspaper Le Monde October 28 2013 Spain a chart showing 60 million telephony metadata was published by the newspaper El Mundo 12 November 19 2013 Norway a chart showing 33 million telephony metadata was published by the tabloid paper Dagbladet 13 December 6 2013 Italy a chart showing almost 46 million telephony metadata was published by the tabloid paper L Espresso 14 February 8 2014 Netherlands a chart showing 1 8 million telephony metadata was published by the newspaper NRC Handelsblad 15 Initially these media wrote that the BoundlessInformant charts showed how many phone calls the NSA intercepted from a particular country A first correction of this interpretation is that the program doesn t count the content of phone calls but only the metadata thereof see below A second correction is about by whom and where these data were collected On August 5 a week after the publication of a chart from BoundlessInformant in Germany the German intelligence agency BND said that they collected these data from foreign communications related to military operations abroad 16 17 A similar statement was made by the Norwegian Intelligence Service after a chart about Norway was published on November 19 18 On February 4 2014 the Dutch government revealed that the 1 8 million metadata in the chart about the Netherlands were not collected by NSA but instead by the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service MIVD also to support military operations which almost led to the resignation of the Dutch interior minister 19 On October 29 2013 NSA director Keith B Alexander declared that accusations in French Spanish and Italian media about NSA intercepting millions of phone calls from these countries are completely false He added that This is not information that we collected on European citizens It represents information that we and our NATO allies have collected in defense of our countries and in support of military operations 20 Technology EditAlthough the initial reports in European media stated that the various charts presented the numbers of phone calls intercepted by NSA a PowerPoint presentation and a FAQ document published by The Guardian 21 say that BoundlessInformant is counting and analysing DNI internet and DNR telephony metadata records passing through the NSA s signals intelligence systems and are therefore not showing how much content of internet and telephone communications is intercepted 22 Data analyzed by Boundless Informant includes electronic surveillance program records and telephone call metadata records stored in an NSA data archive called GM PLACE It does not include FISA data according to the FAQ memo PRISM a government codename for a collection effort known officially as US 984XN which was revealed at the same time as Boundless Informant is one source of DNR data 9 According to published slides Boundless Informant leverages Free and Open Source Software and is therefore available to all NSA developers and corporate services hosted in the cloud The tool uses HDFS MapReduce and Accumulo formerly Cloudbase 23 for data processing 24 See also Edit United States portal Politics portalList of government surveillance projects NSA warrantless surveillance 2001 07 Stellar WindReferences Edit a b Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill June 8 2013 Boundless Informant the NSA s secret tool to track global surveillance data The Guardian London Retrieved June 12 2013 Greenwald Glenn MacAskill Ewen Poitras Laura June 9 2013 Edward Snowden the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance The Guardian London Retrieved June 9 2013 Here s The NSA s Supposedly Non Existent Tool To Track Global Metadata Gawker June 9 2013 Archived from the original on March 20 2014 Retrieved March 20 2014 Dean John W George W Bush as the New Richard M Nixon Both Wiretapped Illegally and Impeachable Both Claimed That a President May Violate Congress Laws to Protect National Security FindLaw December 30 2005 The Impeachment of George W Bush by Elizabeth Holtzman The Nation January 11 2006 Adopted By The House Of Delegates Archive American Bar Association February 13 2006 Greenwald Glenn June 6 2013 NSA taps in to internet giants systems to mine user data secret files reveal The Guardian London Retrieved June 6 2013 Boundless Informant World news The Guardian London June 8 2013 Retrieved June 9 2013 a b Boundless Informant NSA data mining tool four key slides The Guardian London June 8 2013 Retrieved June 9 2013 a b c d Gellman Barton Edward Snowden after months of NSA revelations says his mission s accomplished The Washington Post December 23 2013 Retrieved on February 7 2014 Daten aus Deutschland August 5 2013 Glenn Greenwald amp German Aranda La NSA espio 60 millones de llamadas en Espana en solo un mes October 28 2013 Glenn Greenwald amp Arne Halvorsen USA overvaket 33 millioner norske mobilsamtaler November 19 2013 Glenn Greenwald amp Stefania Maurizi Da qui ci spiano gli americani December 6 2013 Top Level Telecommunications BOUNDLESSINFORMANT metadata collection by Dutch MIVD instead of NSA February 8 2014 Der Spiegel Mass Data Transfers from Germany Aid US Surveillance August 5 2013 Marcel Rosenbach amp Holger Stark Der NSA Komplex Deutsche Verlags Anstalt Munchen 2014 p 235 and 326 Greenwald Glenn November 22 2013 NSA files repeatedly show collection of data against countries not from dagbladet no in Norwegian Retrieved April 28 2021 Top Level Telecommunications Dutch government tried to hide the truth about metadata collection February 17 2014 Reuters com NSA chief defends agency amid U S spy rift with Europe Archived September 24 2015 at the Wayback Machine October 29 2013 Boundless Informant NSA explainer full document text The Guardian London June 8 2013 Retrieved June 12 2013 Top Level Telecommunications BOUNDLESSINFORMANT only shows metadata October 22 2013 NSA Mimics Google Pisses Off Senate Cade Metz Wired July 17 2012 Boundless Informant slides Documentcloud org Retrieved June 9 2013 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Boundless Informant Boundless Informant the NSA s secret tool to track global surveillance data Article about how BOUNDLESSINFORMANT only shows metadata All BoundlessInformant documents slides and screenshots Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Boundless Informant amp oldid 1133716611, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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