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Surveillance

The NSA Revelations All in One Chart

This is a plot of the NSA programs revealed in the past year according to whether they are bulk or targeted, and whether the targets of surveillance are foreign or domestic. Most of the programs fall squarely into the agency’s stated mission of foreign surveillance, but some – particularly those that are both domestic and broad-sweeping – are more controversial.

Just as with the New York Magazine approval matrix that served as our inspiration, the placement of each program is based on judgments and is approximate.

For more details, read our FAQ or listen to our podcast. Also, take our quiz to test your NSA knowledge.

Targeted
Bulk
Foreign
Domestic

Source: ACLU, ProPublica Research

Program Name Description Agency Bulk? Targeted? Foreign? Domestic?
VictoryDance The NSA tested a technique for using drones to map "the Wi-Fi fingerprint of nearly every major town in Yemen." NSA ✓ ✓
Hammerchant / Hammerstein NSA programs to spy on data sent through voice over IP calls and Virtual Private Networks. NSA ✓ ✓
ANT catalog Various techniques - with names like IronChef and DropoutJeep - used to inject surveillance software into Apple, Cisco, Dell and other products. NSA ✓ ✓
Cracking cellphone encryption The NSA has the capability to defeat a widely-used cellphone encryption technology. NSA ✓ ✓
Optic Nerve A British program to bulk collect images from Yahoo webcam chats: "It would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person." NSA ✓ ✓
Swedish-American surveillance of Russia A Swedish-American effort to spy on Russian leadership. NSA ✓ ✓
Gilgamesh An NSA program to geolocate people's SIM cards via Predator drones. NSA ✓ ✓
Buddy List, Address Book Spying An NSA effort to collect hundreds of millions of contact lists from email and instant messaging accounts. NSA ✓ ✓
Hacking Anonymous A British spy unit to monitor hacktivists such as the group Anonymous. NSA ✓ ✓
Co-Traveler/ FASCIA The NSA collected 5 billion records a day of cellphone locations worldwide. NSA ✓ ✓
Hacking OPEC NSA and GCHQ programs to infiltrate the OPEC oil cartel NSA and GCHQ ✓ ✓
Tracfin Tracfin amasses gigabytes of data about credit card purchases. NSA ✓ ✓
Wellspring An NSA program to collect images from emails for facial recognition. NSA ✓ ✓
Honey Traps A British spy effort to conduct covert Internet investigations, including sexual "honey-traps." NSA ✓ ✓
Surveillance of 2009 U.N. Climate Change conference NSA surveillance of the 2009 U.N. Climate Change conference. NSA ✓ ✓
Spying on Gamers The NSA and GCHQ monitored games including World of Warcraft. NSA and GCHQ ✓ ✓
Targeting Embassies An NSA operation targeting the Italian embassy in Washington D.C. NSA ✓ ✓
Dishfire An NSA program to collect up to 200 million text messages a day worldwide. NSA ✓ ✓
QuantumTheory NSA programs that inject spyware onto targets' computers through so-called "man on the side" attacks. Variants include QuantumInsert, QuantumBiscuit, and QuantumSmackdown. NSA ✓ ✓
Muscular The NSA and GCHQ have jointly operated a program to intercept data from Yahoo and Google networks. NSA and GCHQ ✓ ✓
Prism The Prism program collects data from the servers of U.S. technology companies. NSA ✓ ✓
Hacking Angela Merkel The NSA targeted German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone. NSA ✓ ✓
Hacking Al Jazeera NSA hacked into Al Jazeera's internal communications system. NSA ✓ ✓
Cellphone Location Test In 2010 and 2011, the NSA tested bulk collection of location data from Americans cellphones. NSA ✓ ✓
Tapping Underseas Cables Companies - including BT, Vodafone, and Verizon Business - gave GCHQ access to their underseas cables. NSA ✓ ✓
Angry Birds NSA and GCHQ efforts to intercept information transmitted by phone apps, including Angry Birds. NSA and GCHQ ✓ ✓
Royal Concierge A GCHQ program to monitor hotel reservations for "governmental hard targets." NSA ✓ ✓
Monitoring Privacy Software The NSA collected information about users of privacy software including visitors to two Massachussetts Institute of Technology computers. NSA ✓ ✓
SecondDate A so-called man-in-the-middle attack for "mass exploitation" of traffic "passing through network choke points" as well as "surgical target selection." NSA ✓ ✓
NoseySmurf, TrackerSmurf, DreamySmurf, ParanoidSmurf The Smurf programs get inside iPhones and Android devices, turning on microphones, tracking location, and managing power. NSA ✓ ✓
Internet Metadata A program, ended in 2011, to sweep up domestic Internet metadata such as the To and From fields in emails. NSA ✓ ✓
EgotisticalGoat and EgotisticalGiraffe The Egotistical animal programs are techniques to track users of Tor anonymizing software. NSA ✓ ✓
Program to Discredit Militants An NSA effort to spy on targets' online sexual activity. NSA ✓ ✓
LinkedIn Hack Engineers at a Belgian telcom were infected with malware, via a technique called QuantumInsert, when they pulled up their LinkedIn profiles. NSA ✓ ✓
Bullrun Joint NSA and GCHQ effort to undermine and weaken cryptography standards and tools. NSA and GCHQ ✓ ✓ ✓
Shotgiant An NSA program to break into Chinese-owned Huawei networks and products. NSA ✓ ✓
WillowVixen An NSA technique to deploy malware by sending out emails that trick targets into clicking a malicious link. NSA ✓ ✓
Turmoil A large network of clandestine surveillance "sensors" to collect data from satellites, cables, and microwave communications around the world. NSA ✓ ✓
Turbine A network of active command and control servers around the world that can be used for "industrial scale exploitation." NSA ✓ ✓
Squeaky Dolphin A British effort to monitor YouTube video views, URLS "liked" on Facebook and Blogger visits. NSA ✓ ✓
Spying on American Muslims FBI monitored e-mail of 200 Americans including prominent Muslims such as a former Bush Administration official, two professors, an attorney and the leader of a Muslim civil rights group. NSA ✓ ✓
Upstream The Upstream program collects communications transiting the Internet via commercial partners codenamed Fairview, Stormbrew, Blarney, and Oakstar. NSA ✓ ✓ ✓
50,000 implants An NSA map of the 50,000 computers worldwide it has implanted with surveillance malware. NSA ✓ ✓
G8 and G20 Summit Spying The NSA conducted surveillance during the 2010 G8 and G20 summits in Canada. NSA ✓ ✓
Phone Metadata The well-known and controversial program to collect phone call records - aka metadata - of nearly all Americans. NSA ✓ ✓
HappyFoot An NSA effort to use Web cookies and data from phone apps to identify users' devices and physical locations. NSA ✓ ✓