STORMBREW is a secret internet surveillance program of the
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collect ...
(NSA) of the United States. It was disclosed in the summer of 2013 as part of the leaks by former NSA contractor
Edward Snowden.
The FY 2013 budget for STORMBREW was $46.06 million.
Scope of the program
The program comprises cooperation with a "key corporate partner", which was identified on October 23, 2013 by the Washington Post—quoting NSA historian
Matthew Aid—as
Verizon
Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas ...
.
This was confirmed by a joint report by ''Pro Publica'' and ''The New York Times'' from August 15, 2015.
[New York Times]
AT&T Helped U.S. Spy on Internet on a Vast Scale
& Pro Publica
NSA Spying Relies on AT&T’s ‘Extreme Willingness to Help’
August 15, 2015.
STORMBREW is an umbrella program involving surveillance of telecommunications. It falls under the category of "
Upstream collection
Upstream collection is a term used by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States for intercepting telephone and Internet traffic from the Internet backbone, meaning major Internet cables and switches, both domestic and foreign. Beside ...
", meaning that data is pulled directly from fiber-optic cables and top-level communications infrastructure, which allows access to very high volumes of data. A first pre-selection is done by the telecommunication providers themselves, who select the Internet traffic that most likely contains foreign communications. Then the data is passed on to the NSA, where a second selection is made by briefly copying the traffic and filtering it by using so-called "strong selectors" like
phone number
A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices f ...
s,
e-mail
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
or
IP address
An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...
es of people and organizations in which NSA is interested.
[Siobhan Gorman and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries]
NSA Surveillance Programs Cover 75% of Internet Traffic Transiting U.S.
Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2013
A map shows that the collection is done entirely within the United States. This corporate partner has servers in Washington, California, Texas, Florida, and in or around New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
SIGADs
STORMBREW consists of the following
SIGAD
A SIGINT Activity Designator (or SIGAD) identifies a signals intelligence (SIGINT) line of collection activity associated with a signals collection station, such as a base or a ship. For example, the SIGAD for Menwith Hill in the UK is USD1000. S ...
s:
''Note: SIGADs not otherwise designated are presumed to operate under the legal authority of Section 702 of the
FISA Amendments Act (FAA)''
Glossary
*Cyber Hit Counts: no explanation has been provided in the source material.
*Directory ONMR: no explanation has been provided in the source material.
*DNI: Digital Network Intelligence.
*DNR: Dial Number Recognition.
[
*MARINA: An NSA Database of Internet metadata.]
Media Relating to STORMBREW
File:International Cables- Crop.jpg, Upstream: Map of International Cables
File:Transit authority (3) -crop.jpg, Upstream: Transit Authority
File:Transit authority map -Crop.jpg, Upstream: Map of Transit Authority
File:Unique aspects-crop.jpg, Upstream: Unique Aspects
File:Corporate Portfolio (3) -Crop.jpg, Upstream: Corporate Portfolio
File:US-983 STORMBREW - crop.jpg, STORMBREW: STORMBREW SIGAD
File:US-983 STORMBREW map - crop.jpg, STORMBREW: STORMBREW SIGAD map
File:US-3140 MADCAPOCELOT - crop.jpg, STORMBREW: MADCAPOCELOT
References
{{Reflist, 2
National Security Agency operations
Intelligence agency programmes revealed by Edward Snowden