New Snowden leak on online surveillance upstages US move to declassify documents

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Protesters rally to support US whistle-blower Edward Snowden in Hanover, Germany, last week. Photo: EPA

Published: 8:08am, 1 Aug 2013Updated: 4:13am, 29 Aug 2013

New revelations from former security contractor Edward Snowden that US intelligence agencies have access to a vast online tracking tool came to light on Wednesday, as lawmakers put the secret surveillance programs under greater scrutiny.

The Guardian, citing documents from Snowden, published National Security Agency training materials for the XKeyscore programme, which the British newspaper described as the NSA’s widest-reaching system that covers “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet”.

Intelligence analysts can conduct surveillance through XKeyscore by filling in an on-screen form giving only a “broad justification” for the search and no review by a court or NSA staff, the newspaper said.

NSA leaker Edward Snowden at Sheremetyevo airport, Moscow. Photo: AP

Snowden’s disclosures to media that US intelligence agencies collected data on phone calls and other communications of Americans and foreign citizens as a tool to fight terrorism have sparked uproar in the United States and abroad.

Intelligence officials insist the surveillance programmes helped thwart terrorist attacks and saved many American lives.

“The implication that NSA’s collection is arbitrary and unconstrained is false,” the agency said in a statement in response to the Guardian’s new report, calling XKeyscore part of “NSA’s lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system”.