🔗 XKeyscore

🔗 United States/U.S. Government 🔗 United States 🔗 Mass surveillance 🔗 Espionage 🔗 Computing 🔗 Australia 🔗 New Zealand 🔗 United Kingdom 🔗 Computing/Computer Security 🔗 Computing/Networking

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 intelligence agencies, including the Australian Signals Directorate, Canada's Communications Security Establishment, New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau, Britain's Government Communications Headquarters, Japan's Defense Intelligence Headquarters, and Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst.

In July 2013, Edward Snowden publicly revealed the program's purpose and use by the NSA in The Sydney Morning Herald and O Globo newspapers. The code name was already public knowledge because it was mentioned in earlier articles, and, like many other code names, it appears in job postings and online résumés of employees.

On July 3, 2014, German public broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk, a member of ARD, published excerpts of XKeyscore's source code. A team of experts analyzed the source code.