Details of a top secret U.S. National Security Agency program for culling intelligence from the internet indicate that at least one computer server was or is located in Ukraine, the Guardian wrote on July 31, citing documents provided by former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.
Called
XKeyscore, the
program, the Guardian wrote, “allows analysts to search with no prior
authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the
browsing histories of millions of individuals” worldwide.
“I, sitting
at my desk,” said Snowden in his first video interview published by the
Guardian on June 10, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a
federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email.”
U.S.
officials strenuously denied the specific claim. The U.S. embassy in Kyiv did
not immediately provide a response to a Kyiv Post request for comment.
The
Guardian made a presentation dating to Feb. 25 2008 of the NSA tool public on
July 31. Page six of the presentation shows a political map of the world with a
red dot on Ukraine, indicating that at least one server is located in the
country. Red dots were also located in Russia and China.
Altogether
the presentation says XKeyscore operates in “approximately 150 sites” with
“over 700 servers” across the globe. XKeyscore, the presentation materials say,
is the NSA’s “widest reaching” system developing intelligence from computer
networks.
According
to the
Guardian, by 2008 some 300 terrorists had been captured using intelligence
from XKeyscore.
Nine days
after the surveillance program was made public, U.S. President Barack Obama
vowed on Aug. 9 to improve oversight of surveillance and restore public trust
in the government’s programs, saying the U.S. “can and must be transparent.”
Snowden on
May 20 flew to Hong Kong from Hawaii carrying four laptop computers that
enabled him to gain access to some of the U.S. government’s most
highly-classified secrets, states the Guardian’s timeline
of events related to the American whistleblower.
He was an
employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton at the NSA.
He
subsequently disclosed America’s global electronic surveillance programs. He
went public on June 9. He then flew to Moscow on June 23 in a bid to seek
asylum. On Aug. 1, Snowden was granted one year’s temporary asylum in Russia,
and entered Russian territory from the transit zone of a Moscow airport where he
spent more than a month.
On Aug. 7
Obama announced that he had cancelled a planned summit with Russian President
Vladimir Putin in Moscow that was planned for September as part of a broader
G20 meeting of international leaders in St. Petersburg.
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached
at [email protected].
