Trafficthief (stylized TRAFFICTHIEF) is a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases s ...

maintained by the United States'

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) and operated under the

Turbulence In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is fluid motion characterized by chaotic changes in pressure and flow velocity. It is in contrast to a laminar flow, which occurs when a fluid flows in parallel layers, with no disruption between ...

program, containing "

Meta-data Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

from a subset of tasked strong-selectors," according to an

XKeyscore XKeyscore (XKEYSCORE or XKS) is a secret computer system used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) for searching and analyzing global Internet data, which it collects in real time. The NSA has shared XKeyscore with other intellige ...

presentation. An example of a strong selector is an

email address An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Engineer ...

. In other words, it would be a database of the metadata associated with names, phone numbers, email addresses, and other identifying information that intelligence services are specifically targeting. Journalist

Marc Ambinder Marc Ambinder (; born ) is an American university professor, journalist, and television producer. He is a former politics editor at ''The Atlantic'', a White House Correspondent for ''National Journal'', contributing editor for '' GQ'', and was edi ...

speculates the program is a "raw

SIGINT Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of '' signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ...

viewer for data analysis." File:KS10-001.jpg, A reference to TRAFFICTHIEF in an

slide

References

{{National Security Agency National Security Agency Espionage projects