11 Facts About XKeyscore

XKeyscore is a secret computer system used by the United States National Security Agency for searching and analyzing global Internet data, which it collects in real time.

XKeyscore is a complicated system, and various authors have different interpretations of its actual capabilities.

Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald explained XKeyscore as being a system which enables almost unlimited surveillance of anyone anywhere in the world, while the NSA has said that usage of the system is limited and restricted.

XKeyscore added that the NSA's database of collected communications allows its analysts to listen "to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you've entered, and it alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or that IP address do in the future".

XKeyscore is considered a "passive" program, in that it listens, but does not transmit anything on the networks that it targets.

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XKeyscore has been integrated with MARINA, which is NSA's database for internet metadata.

Analysts, XKeyscore provides a "series of viewers for common data types", which allows them to query terabytes of raw data gathered at the aforementioned collection sites.

XKeyscore holds raw and unselected communications traffic, analysts can not only perform queries using "strong selectors" like e-mail addresses, but using "soft selectors", like keywords, against the body texts of e-mail and chat messages and digital documents and spreadsheets in English, Arabic and Chinese.

NSA slides published in The Guardian during 2013 claimed that XKeyscore had played a role in capturing 300 terrorists by 2008, which could not be substantiated as the redacted documents do not cite instances of terrorist interventions.

XKeyscore allowed them to focus on the intended topics, while ignoring unrelated data.

XKeyscore proved to be outstanding for tracking active groups associated with the Anonymous movement in Germany, because it allows for searching on patterns, rather than particular individuals.