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The NSA has been covertly implanting interception tools in US servers heading overseas – even though the US government has warned against using Chinese technology for the same reasons, says Glenn Greenwald, in an extract from his new book about the Snowden affair, No Place to Hide

For years, the US government loudly warned the world that Chinese routers and other internet devices pose a "threat" because they are built with backdoor surveillance functionality that gives the Chinese government the ability to spy on anyone using them. Yet what the NSA's documents show is that Americans have been engaged in precisely the activity that the US accused the Chinese of doing.

The Rogers committee voiced fears that the two companies were enabling Chinese state surveillance, although it acknowledged that it had obtained no actual evidence that the firms had implanted their routers and other systems with surveillance devices. Nonetheless, it cited the failure of those companies to cooperate and urged US firms to avoid purchasing their products

The Luxembourg operations of Barclays, through which of much of the bank's controversial tax planning services are channelled, generated £1.4bn of profits in 2013 – £100m for each of the 14 people employed there.In published details about the turnover, tax and headcount of the main countries in which its operates, Barclays also revealed it paid just £20m of tax in Luxembourg.Barclays' chief executive, Antony Jenkins, pledged in February 2013 to close down the bank's tax avoidance unit, known as structured capital markets (SCM), as part of his efforts to clean up the reputation of the bank. However, he said the process would take several years.Much of the SCM activity was driven through Luxembourg. Lord Lawson, the former Conservative chancellor, described the business as orchestrating tax avoidance on an "industrial scale".

The data was published by Barclays to comply with a new European Union directive and refers to the 2013 calendar year.

No act of government calls for greater debate and deliberation than the decision to commit the country to war. The recent civil war in Syria sparked a national conversation in the United States about the direction of American foreign policy, and rightly so. But Syria was not the only civil war preoccupying the administration. While orchestrating the drawdown in Afghanistan and openly contemplating intervening in Syria, the president appears to have secretly inserted the United States in Yemen's civil war. Today, US forces conduct operations alongside the Yemeni army as it battles a domestic insurgency. The troubling details of some of those operations were revealed Tuesday, in a major report by Human Rights Watch on the scope of US military strikes in Yemen. The picture that emerges is grim: the president is waging a secret war in Yemen, and it's time for him to come clean.

Exclusive Above-top-secret details of Britain’s covert surveillance programme - including the location of a clandestine British base tapping undersea cables in the Middle East - have so far remained secret, despite being leaked by fugitive NSA sysadmin Edward Snowden. Government pressure has meant that some media organisations, despite being in possession of these facts, have declined to reveal them. Today, however, the Register publishes them in full.The secret British spy base is part of a programme codenamed “CIRCUIT” and also referred to as Overseas Processing Centre 1 (OPC-1). It is located at Seeb, on the northern coast of Oman, where it taps in to various undersea cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Seeb is one of a three site GCHQ network in Oman, at locations codenamed “TIMPANI”, “GUITAR” and “CLARINET”. TIMPANI, near the Strait of Hormuz, can monitor Iraqi communications. CLARINET, in the south of Oman, is strategically close to Yemen. British national telco BT, referred to within GCHQ and the American NSA under the ultra-classified codename “REMEDY”, and Vodafone Cable (which owns the former Cable & Wireless company, aka “GERONTIC”) are the two top earners of secret GCHQ payments running into tens of millions of pounds annually.

The actual locations of such codenamed “access points” into the worldwide cable backbone are classified 3 levels above Top Secret and labelled “Strap 3”. The true identities of the companies hidden behind codenames such as “REMEDY”, “GERONTIC”, “STREETCAR” or “PINNAGE” are classified one level below this, at “Strap 2”.After these details were withheld, the government opted not to move against the Guardian newspaper last year for publishing above-top-secret information at the lower level designated “Strap 1”. This included details of the billion-pound interception storage system, Project TEMPORA, which were revealed in 2013 and which have triggered Parliamentary enquiries in Britain and Europe, and cases at the European Court of Human Rights. The Guardian was forced to destroy hard drives of leaked information to prevent political embarrassment over extensive commercial arrangements with these and other telecommunications companies who have secretly agreed to tap their own and their customers’ or partners’ overseas cables for the intelligence agency GCHQ. Intelligence chiefs also wished to conceal the identities of countries helping GCHQ and its US partner the NSA by sharing information or providing facilities

According to documents revealed by Edward Snowden to journalists including Glenn Greenwald among others, the intelligence agency annually pays selected companies tens of millions of pounds to run secret teams which install hidden connections which copy customers' data and messages to the spooks’ processing centres. The GCHQ-contracted companies also install optical fibre taps or “probes” into equipment belonging to other companies without their knowledge or consent. Within GCHQ, each company has a special section called a “Sensitive Relationship Team” or SRT.BT and Vodafone/C&W also operate extensive long distance optical fibre communications networks throughout the UK, installed and paid for by GCHQ, NSA, or by a third and little known UK intelligence support organization called the National Technical Assistance Centre (NTAC).

GCHQ’s bulk surveillance of electronic communications has scooped up emails to and from journalists working for some of the US and UK’s largest media organisations, analysis of documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals. Emails from the BBC, Reuters, the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, the Sun, NBC and the Washington Post were saved by GCHQ and shared on the agency’s intranet as part of a test exercise by the signals intelligence agency. The disclosure comes as the British government faces intense pressure to protect the confidential communications of reporters, MPs and lawyers from snooping.

Senior editors and lawyers in the UK have called for the urgent introduction of a freedom of expression law amid growing concern over safeguards proposed by ministers to meet concerns over the police use of surveillance powers linked to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa). More than 100 editors, including those from all the national newspapers, have signed a letter, coordinated by the Society of Editors and Press Gazette, to the UK prime minister, David Cameron, protesting at snooping on journalists’ communications. In the wake of terror attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices and a Jewish grocer in Paris, Cameron has renewed calls for further bulk-surveillance powers, such as those which netted these journalistic communications.

The journalists’ communications were among 70,000 emails harvested in the space of less than 10 minutes on one day in November 2008 by one of GCHQ’s numerous taps on the fibre-optic cables that make up the backbone of the internet. The communications, which were sometimes simple mass-PR emails sent to dozens of journalists but also included correspondence between reporters and editors discussing stories, were retained by GCHQ and were available to all cleared staff on the agency intranet. There is nothing to indicate whether or not the journalists were intentionally targeted. The mails appeared to have been captured and stored as the output of a then-new tool being used to strip irrelevant data out of the agency’s tapping process. New evidence from other UK intelligence documents revealed by Snowden also shows that a GCHQ information security assessment listed “investigative journalists” as a threat in a hierarchy alongside terrorists or hackers.

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown. Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The ISIS executioner who appeared in several execution videos, speaking with British accent, has been identified as the 26-year-old Mohammed Emwazi who claims that he had been harassed and intimidated by MI5. How are Western intelligence services recruiting targeted persons? Mohammed Emwazi, a.k.a. Jihadi John” from the British capital London has, according to the guardian  been harassed by the British intelligence service MI5.

In an article entitled “How Mohammed Emwazi went from fresh Graduate to knife-wielding killer” the newspaper would report that his ordeal began when he traveled to Tanzania in 2009. The domestic British intelligence service MI5 was reportedly already in touch with Emwazi before he left the UK and began appearing in ISIS videos. Emwazi reportedly stated that he had been harassed to such a degree that he filed a complaint with the Independent Police Complaints Commission over his treatment.

What is the most common Forced Recruitment Strategy of the UK’s MI5, the German Verfassunsschutz and other Western European Intelligence Services?  One of the most common recruitment techniques among European intelligence services is to single out persons who committed minor crimes, threaten them with severe consequences or with the possibility to “set them up and let them serve major prison sentences”. After this first round of intimidation they are then approached by a domestic intelligence service who will offer them that “all problems could easily disappear if they cooperate; or else”. Especially the UK’s MI5 and the German Federal as well as State Verfassungsschutz (Constitutional Protection Police) have perfected this recruitment method. The most common “targets” for this recruitment method are individuals of special interest. During the 1960s – 70s this would typically be Communists, Socialists. Since the 1980s and after the end of the so-called cold war in the 90s, the Western European intelligence services began to focus on the new “enemy”, Muslims.

Senior UN officials in Jerusalem have been accused of caving in to Israeli pressure to abandon moves to include the state’s armed forces on a UN list of serious violators of children’s rights. UN officials backed away from recommending that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) be included on the list following telephone calls from senior Israeli officials. The Israelis allegedly warned of serious consequences if a meeting of UN agencies and NGOs based in Jerusalem to ratify the recommendation went ahead. Within hours, the meeting was cancelled. “Top officials have buckled under political pressure,” said a UN source. “As a result, a clear message has been given that Israel will not be listed.”

Organisations pressing for the IDF’s inclusion on the list since the war in Gaza last summer – which left more than 500 children dead and more than 3,300 injured – include Save the Children and War Child as well as at least a dozen Palestinian human rights organisations, the Israeli rights organisation B’Tselem and UN bodies such as the children’s agency Unicef. “These organisations are in uproar over what has happened,” said the UN source

The IDF’s inclusion on the UN’s list of grave violators of children’s rights would place it alongside non-state armed forces such as Islamic State, Boko Haram and the Taliban. There are no other state armies on the list. It would propel Israel further towards pariah status within international bodies and could lead to UN sanctions.

Germany may step up its counter-espionage efforts after an employee of its intelligence service was arrested on suspicion of spying for the US.Measures being considered in response to scandal include monitoring the intelligence activities of nominal Nato allies such as America, Britain and France, as well as expelling US agents from Germany.

The BND staffer, a technical support worker employed in a unit dealing mainly with the protection of German soldiers abroad, is alleged to have established contact with the American secret service by contacting the US embassy. Rather than report the contact to their allied German counterparts, the CIA is reported to have paid the agent €25,000 (£20,000) for 218 documents classified as confidential or top secret .

This morning, Turkish police surrounded protesters in Taksim Gezi park, the central square in Istanbul, blocked all exits and attacked them with chemical sprays and teargas.An Occupy-style movement has taken off in Istanbul. The ostensible issue of conflict is modest. Protesters started gathering in the park on 27 May, to oppose its demolition as part of a redevelopment plan. But this is more than an environmental protest. It has become a lightning conductor for all the grievances accumulated against the government.

As the dust settles on yesterday evening's revelation that the U.S. government has been mining data from most of Silicon Valley's largest companies in a program called "PRISM," one question stands out: How did the NSA get access? Apple, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, the largest companies involved in PRISM, the existence of which was revealed last night in a simultaneous Washington Post and Guardian scoop, have categorically denied knowledge of or participation in the program in a series of statements, while acknowledging that they do provide targeted access to the government when required to do so by law, generally according to court orders.

So what gives? Does the government have backdoor access so secret that not even their targets are aware? Are the tech companies lying? Or are they forbidden—as Verizon allegedly is with its NSA arrangement—from acknowledging its existence to an absurd extent?

But Why Is It Mainly Focusing On Enemies of the West? But the Panama Papers reporting mainly focuses on friends of Russia’s Putin, Assad’s Syria and others disfavored by the West. Former British Ambassador Craig Murray notes: Whoever leaked the Mossack Fonseca papers appears motivated by a genuine desire to expose the system that enables the ultra wealthy to hide their massive stashes, often corruptly obtained and all involved in tax avoidance. These Panamanian lawyers hide the wealth of a significant proportion of the 1%, and the massive leak of their documents ought to be a wonderful thing. Unfortunately the leaker has made the dreadful mistake of turning to the western corporate media to publicise the results. In consequence the first major story, published today by the Guardian, is all about Vladimir Putin and a cellist on the fiddle. As it happens I believe the story and have no doubt Putin is bent.  But why focus on Russia? Russian wealth is only a tiny minority of the money hidden away with the aid of Mossack Fonseca. In fact, it soon becomes obvious that the selective reporting is going to stink.  The Suddeutsche Zeitung, which received the leak, gives a detailed explanation of the methodology the corporate media used to search the files. The main search they have done is for names associated with breaking UN sanctions regimes. The Guardian reports this too and helpfully lists those countries as Zimbabwe, North Korea, Russia and Syria. The filtering of this Mossack Fonseca information by the corporate media follows a direct western governmental agenda. There is no mention at all of use of Mossack Fonseca by massive western corporations or western billionaires – the main customers. And the Guardian is quick to reassure that “much of the leaked material will remain private.”

I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also. A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of “We know who it was, it was the Russians” are beneath contempt. As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks – there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened. The continued ability of the mainstream media to claim the leaks lost Clinton the election because of “Russia”, while still never acknowledging the truths the leaks reveal, is Kafkaesque.

I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype: The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was “directing” the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government. Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims “bullshit”, adding: “They are absolutely making it up.” “I know who leaked them,” Murray said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things. “If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States. “America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it’s not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever.” But only three hours. While the article was not taken down, the home page links to it vanished and it was replaced by a ludicrous one repeating the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly – that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion. Presumably this totally nutty theory, that Putin is somehow now controlling the FBI, is meant to answer my obvious objection that, if the CIA know who it is, why haven’t they arrested somebody. That bit of course would be the job of the FBI, who those desperate to annul the election now wish us to believe are the KGB. It is terrible that the prime conduit for this paranoid nonsense is a once great newspaper, the Washington Post, which far from investigating executive power, now is a sounding board for totally evidence free anonymous source briefing of utter bullshit from the executive.

Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling. Contrast this to the “credible sources” Freedland relies on. What access do they have to the whistleblower? Zero. They have not the faintest idea who the whistleblower is. Otherwise they would have arrested them. What reputation do they have for truthfulness? It’s the Clinton gang and the US government, for goodness sake. In fact, the sources any serious journalist would view as “credible” give the opposite answer to the one Freedland wants. But in what passes for Freedland’s mind, “credible” is 100% synonymous with “establishment”. When he says “credible sources” he means “establishment sources”. That is the truth of the “fake news” meme. You are not to read anything unless it is officially approved by the elite and their disgusting, crawling whores of stenographers like Freedland.

The National Security Agency has collected almost 200 million text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top-secret documents. The untargeted collection and storage of SMS messages – including their contacts – is revealed in a joint investigation between the Guardian and the UK’s Channel 4 News based on material provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents also reveal the UK spy agency GCHQ has made use of the NSA database to search the metadata of “untargeted and unwarranted” communications belonging to people in the UK.

The NSA program, codenamed Dishfire, collects “pretty much everything it can”, according to GCHQ documents, rather than merely storing the communications of existing surveillance targets. The NSA has made extensive use of its vast text message database to extract information on people’s travel plans, contact books, financial transactions and more – including of individuals under no suspicion of illegal activity. An agency presentation from 2011 – subtitled “SMS Text Messages: A Goldmine to Exploit” – reveals the program collected an average of 194 million text messages a day in April of that year. In addition to storing the messages themselves, a further program known as “Prefer” conducted automated analysis on the untargeted communications.

The Prefer program uses automated text messages such as missed call alerts or texts sent with international roaming charges to extract information, which the agency describes as “content-derived metadata”, and explains that “such gems are not in current metadata stores and would enhance current analytics”. On average, each day the NSA was able to extract:

The Foreign Office confirmed that the head of GCHQ, the British spy agency at the centre of the Edward Snowden leaks controversy, is to stand down.The departure of Sir Iain Lobban, 53, who has been GCHQ director since July 2008, was being presented by the government as a long-planned move rather than being linked to the Snowden row.The Foreign Office said: "Iain Lobban is doing an outstanding job as director GCHQ. Today is simply about starting the process of ensuring we have a suitable successor in place before he moves on as planned at the end of the year."

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has been accused of being a traitor by activists after publicly rejecting calls for a boycott of Israel.His unambiguous statement, made in the aftermath of Nelson Mandela's death, has fuelled a bitter debate on the legitimacy and efficacy of sanctions over Israel's treatment of Palestinians.However, Abbas distinguished between Israel's borders and its settlements in Palestinian territories. "We do not support the boycott of Israel. But we ask everyone to boycott the products of the settlements."His comments infuriated the boycott movement, which after Mandela's death has been boosted by comparisons with the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa and the decision last week of the American Studies Association (ASA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions.The boycott movement claims it is on a roll, citing a recent EU prohibition against giving grants or funds to bodies with links to settlements, a warning by the British government that firms risk damaging their reputations if they have dealings with Israeli enterprises across the Green Line, and the decision by a Dutch company to sever links with the Israeli water company, Mekorot.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, set up in 2005 by more than 170 Palestinian civil society organisations, expects next year "to cross even higher thresholds in its drive to isolate Israel, just as South Africa was isolated under apartheid", said Omar Barghouti, one of its founding members.The ASA's decision was "fresh evidence that the BDS movement may be reaching a tipping point on college campuses and among academic associations", he added. Two other US academic bodies – the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and the Association of American Asian Studies – have also backed the boycott movement.

Samia Botmeh, a lecturer at Birzeit university in the West Bank and a leading member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said restricting a boycott to settlements was to focus on the consequences, rather than the origins, of the occupation.

Europe would face the "great danger of a real shooting conflict" if Russian forces moved beyond Crimea to enter the main part of eastern Ukraine, William Hague has said as he accused Vladimir Putin of a major miscalculation.As the foreign secretary warned of another "frozen conflict" in Europe, the energy secretary, Ed Davey, said gas prices could increase if the Ukraine crisis escalated into a military conflict.But the foreign secretary, who said Putin had implemented carefully prepared plans to assume control of Crimea, acknowledged none of the options on the table – diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions – would be able to remove Russian forces from the Black Sea peninsula.

The warning from Hague came shortly after Davey told Britain's energy companies not to seek to make profits from the Ukraine crisis, though he acknowledged gas prices would increase if the crisis escalated.

Hague said he believed Putin would eventually be seen to have made a "big miscalculation" as the EU pivots away from Russia, particularly in the energy sphere. But he admitted that none of the proposed EU measures against Russia, to be introduced on a graduated basis if Moscow refuses to change tack, would remove Russian forces from Crimea.The foreign secretary said: "None of these things force a Russian withdrawal from Crimea. That is well understood. But they will raise the cost to Russia over time."But the foreign secretary, who rejected next Sunday's planned referendum in Crimea, said there was no "tacit acceptance" of the Russian occupation of Crimea. Some of the sanctions identified in the first phase of the EU's action will be triggered if Moscow refuses to discuss the long-term future of Crimea with Ukraine.

Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine on Sunday as exit polls suggested 93% of ballots were in favour of joining Russia, in a referendum that most of the world has condemned as illegal.

Earlier on Sunday Russia and Ukraine agreed a truce in the region until Friday, Ukraine's acting defence minister announced, in a move that may ease tension between Moscow and the western-backed government in Kiev. Speaking on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting, Ukraine's acting defence minister, Ihor Tenyukh, said the deal has been struck with Russia's Black Sea fleet and the Russian defence ministry. "No measures will be taken against our military facilities in Crimea during that time," he said. "Our military sites are therefore proceeding with a replenishment of reserves."The agreement provides some respite for Ukraine's beleaguered troops, who have been trapped on their military bases and naval ships since Russian forces began occupying the peninsula on 27 February. They have been encircled ever since, in some cases without electricity. Local residents have smuggled in food to them amid a nervous standoff with the Russian military.

The National Security Agency created a "secret backdoor" so its massive databases could be searched for the contents of U.S. citizens' confidential phone calls and e-mail messages without a warrant, according to the latest classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden. A report in the Guardian on Friday quoted Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, as saying the secret rule offers a loophole allowing "warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans." That appears to confirm what Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, said in June after receiving a classified briefing from administration officials a few days earlier on the extent of the NSA's domestic surveillance operations. If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he had been told during the briefing. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney who serves on the House Judiciary Committee.

FBI Director Robert Mueller responded by assuring Nadler, according to a transcript of the hearing, that to "listen to the phone," the government would need "a particularized order" from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- a claim that is contradicted by today's Guardian report and other documents. Mueller has been succeeded by James Comey, who was confirmed last month by the Senate. In response to a CNET article at the time, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released a statement saying: "The statement that a single analyst can eavesdrop on domestic communications without proper legal authorization is incorrect and was not briefed to Congress." Clapper never elaborated, however, on what "proper" authorization would be. Today's top-secret document leaked by Snowden reveals that "procedures approved on 3 October 2011 now allow for use of certain United States person names and identifiers as query terms when reviewing collected FAA 702 data."

FAA 702 is a reference to section 702 of a 2008 law that amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Those amendments created a warrantless surveillance process that could be employed by NSA analysts, but Congress never intended it to be used domestically against American citizens: A congressional report accompanying the law claimed it allows electronic surveillance only of "persons located outside the United States in order to acquire foreign intelligence information." In reality, though, the Obama Justice Department has devised secret interpretations of FAA 702 carving out loopholes in what were intended to be strict privacy safeguards. One loophole revealed in June shows that NSA, CIA, and FBI analysts are granted broad access to data vacuumed up by the world's most powerful intelligence agency -- but are supposed to follow certain "targeting" and "minimization" procedures to limit the number of Americans who become individual targets of warrantless surveillance.

Private firms are selling spying tools and mass surveillance technologies to developing countries with promises that "off the shelf" equipment will allow them to snoop on millions of emails, text messages and phone calls, according to a cache of documents published on Monday.The papers show how firms, including dozens from Britain, tout the capabilities at private trade fairs aimed at offering nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East the kind of powerful capabilities that are usually associated with government agencies such as GCHQ and its US counterpart, the National Security Agency.The market has raised concerns among human rights groups and ministers, who are poised to announce new rules about the sale of such equipment from Britain.

The documents are included in an online database compiled by the research watchdog Privacy International, which has spent four years gathering 1,203 brochures and sales pitches used at conventions in Dubai, Prague, Brasilia, Washington, Kuala Lumpur, Paris and London. Analysts posed as potential buyers to gain access to the private fairs.The database, called the Surveillance Industry Index, shows how firms from the UK, Israel, Germany, France and the US offer governments a range of systems that allow them to secretly hack into internet cables carrying email and phone traffic.The index has details from 338 companies, including 77 from the UK, offering a total of 97 different technologies.

The documents include a brochure from a company called Advanced Middle East Systems (AMES), based in Dubai. It has been offering a device called Cerebro – a DIY system similar to the Tempora programme run by GCHQ – that taps information from fibre-optic cables carrying internet traffic.AMES describes Cerebro as a "core technology designed to monitor and analyse in real time communications … including SMS (texting), GSM (mobile calls), billing data, emails, conversations, webmail, chat sessions and social networks."The company brochure makes clear this is done by attaching probes to internet cables. "No co-operation with the providers is required," it adds."Cerebro is designed to store several billions of records – metadata and/or communication contents. At any time the investigators can follow the live activity of their target with advanced targeting criteria (email addresses, phone numbers, key words)," says the brochure.