STORMBREW is a secret internet surveillance program of the
National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States. It was disclosed in the summer of 2013 as part of the leaks by former NSA contractor
Edward Snowden
Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and su ...
.
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
Matthew Morris Aid (March 11, 1958 – August 20, 2018) was an American military historian and author. Aid graduated from Beloit College in 1980, having studied international relations. He studied the Russian language, while a member of the Unite ...
—as
Verizon.
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", 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 numbers,
e-mail or
IP addresses 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
SIGADs:
''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