How Does the NSA Spy on Us?

From hacking exploits and underwater cables across the ocean to massive data gathering programs and movement tracking, it’s clear the NSA is a resourceful agency that saves no expense in turning the world into a Big Brother state. And yes, they know you’re reading this article too.

PRISM and other techniques

First of all, it’s crucial to have the notion that every device connected to the internet is vulnerable– something experts have highlighted numerous times before. Among the various ways used by the NSA to spy on citizens, PRISM represents the largest of them all, accounting for roughly 91% of all data gathered by the agency.

PRISM is a program that collects internet communications from ISPs and other services like Facebook, Google, Apple and many more, which by itself covers pretty much every online step users might take. But this is just the tip of a colossal iceberg hiding beneath the ice-cold waters of the deep and dark ocean that is government spying.

And this is more than just a metaphor, too, since the NSA goes as far as attaching snooping devices to underwater fiber optical cables, which are responsible for keeping the internet up and running throughout the world. Without any proper agreements between the various intelligence agencies of other countries to install said exploits, the NSA can just take a submarine down to the cables and install the devices themselves.

Tapping into credit card networks and internet connected devices is also a common practice, meaning the agency knows exactly what people spend money on and what they say to each other on calls, through text messages and such. This is the responsibility of the Tailored Access Operations hacking division, whose set of bug exploits is extensive and allows for the easy breaking into of devices. This is, in fact, often facilitated by the vulnerabilities that the NSA forces manufacturers to install on their devices, too.

And that’s still not all. It is known that cell phone towers are used to pinpoint a device’s exact location within a city. In this regard, recent cases have shown that even without a SIM card inserted, Android devices are still able to send coordinates back to Google, which in turn is required by PRISM to hand over to the NSA.

International espionage

Contrary to what many may still believe, the intrusive NSA spying methods are not limited to America. Who doesn’t remember in 2015 when an infamous WikiLeaks document revealed that German ministries had been spied on since the 90s, which even included cellphone and email data of Chancellor Angela Merkel?

Likewise, the same source published more documents revealing NSA’s actions on the Brazilian government, disclosing phone numbers of nearly 30 ministers, also including Dilma Rousseff, president of the country at the time. In this case, the NSA went even further, with what WikiLeaks described as “an economic espionage campaign against Brazil” by spying on entities responsible for managing the country’s economy, including the head of its Central Bank.

Taking the most appropriate measures

All this is but a sample of the extent of what is achieved by the NSA behind closed doors at its headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. Yet nowadays, thanks to Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks and other such revelations, the world now has a better understanding that nothing is truly private and that our online behavior is more controlled than ever.

As such even doing something as trivial as a Google search is not safe, so it’s vital to keep in mind that a higher entity – not only NSA but any number of others as well – could be paying attention. There are measures you can take, however, like shielding your connection behind a trustworthy VPN, particularly the providers with transparent no-log policies and that are preferably headquartered in a country with more free data retention laws.