December 26, 2015
Leaked documents that were not attributed to Snowden
Peter Koop
electrospaces.blogspot.nl
December 24, 2015
Since June 2013, numerous top secret documents from the American signals intelligence agency NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ have been disclosed. The overwhelming majority of them came from the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
But what many people probably didn’t notice, is that some of these documents were not provided by Snowden, but by other leakers. Often, the press reports didn’t mention that very clear, and it was only by not attributing such documents to Snowden, that it became clear they came from someone else.
So far, the following secret and top secret documents have been disclosed without having been attributed to Snowden:
Document collections
The most user-friendly collection of all the leaked documents can be found on the website IC Off The Record (which started as a parody on IC On The Record, the official US government website on which declassified documents are published).
Other websites that collect leaked documents related to the Five Eyes agencies, so from Snowden as well as from other sources, are FVEY Docs and Cryptome. The Snowden-documents are also available and searchable through the Snowden Surveillance Archive.
Domestic US leaks
Here, only leaks related to foreign signals intelligence and related military topics will be listed. Not included are therefore documents about American domestic operations, like for example several revelations about the DEA.
- Documents not attributed to Snowden -
Chancellor Merkel tasking record
On October 23, 2013, the German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that the NSA may have eavesdropped on the cell phone of chancellor Merkel. This was based upon “the excerpt from an NSA database about Merkel’s cell phone”, which the magazine received.* A journalist from Der Spiegel made a transcription of the database record, and later on, a copy of this transcription was printed in some German newspapers.
Glenn Greenwald confirmed that this information didn’t came from the Snowden archive, and also Bruce Schneier was convinced that this came from a second source.
Document:
TAO product catalog
On December 29, 2013, the German magazine Der Spiegel published a 50-page catalog from the ANT-unit of NSA’s hacking division TAO. It contains a wide range of sophisticated hacking and eavesdropping techniques. The next day, Jacob Appelbaum discussed them during his presentation at the CCC in Berlin.
According to Bruce Schneier this catalog came from the second source, who also leaked the Merkel tasking record and the XKEYSCORE rules.
On July 3, 2014, the German regional television magazine Reporter disclosed the transcripts of a set of rules used by the NSA’s XKEYSCORE system to automatically execute frequently used search terms, including correlating different identities of a certain target.
According to Bruce Schneier, these rules could be leaked by the second source, which also provided the Merkel tasking record and the TAO catalog.
NCTC watchlisting guidance
On July 23, 2014, the website The Intercept published a manual from the US National CounterTerrorism Center (NCTC) with rules and indications used for putting people in terrorist databases and no-fly lists.
The Intercept says this document was provided by a “source within the intelligence community”.
Article:
Document:
- March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance (UNCLASSIFIED/FOUO)
NCTC terrorist watchlist report
On August 5, 2014, The Intercept published a report from the US National CounterTerrorism Center (NCTC) about terrorist watchlists and databases.
Just like the previous document, this was also obtained from a “source within the intelligence community”. Bruce Schneier says this report is from August 2013, which is well after Snowden had fled the US, and therefore he assumes it was leaked by a third source.
XKEYSCORE rules: New Zealand
On March 14 and March 22, 2015, The New Zealand Herald published transcripts of two sets of XKEYSCORE fingerprints that define targets of the New Zealand signals intelligence agency GCSB. They were not attributed to Snowden, although in the weeks before, New Zealand media published several other documents that did come from the Snowden cache.
Ramstein AFB supporting drone operations
On April 17, 2015, The Intercept and Der Spiegel published a series of slides showing the infrastructure which is used for operating drones, for which the US base in Ramstein, Germany, acts as a relay station.
In the Citizen Four we see Glenn Greenwald visiting Snowden in Moscow, telling him there’s a new source which revealed the role of Ramstein AFB in the drone program.
Articles:
Document:
- Architecture of U.S. Drone Operations (TOP SECRET/REL)
NSA tasking & reporting: France
On June 23, 2015, Wikileaks, in collaboration with the French paper Libération, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Italian paper l'Espresso, published the transcript of entries from an NSA tasking database, as well as intelligence reports about high-level French targets.
Articles:
Documents:
- Top French NSA Targets (no classification available)
- Top French NSA Intercepts (up to TOP SECRET/COMINT-GAMMA)
- Economic Spy Order (SECRET/REL)
NSA tasking & reporting: Germany
On July 1, 2015, Wikileaks, in collaboration with Libération and Mediapart, Süddeutsche Zeitung and l'Espresso, published the transcript of entries from an NSA tasking database, as well as intelligence reports about high-level German targets.
Articles:
Documents:
- Top German NSA Targets (no classification available)
- Top German NSA Intercepts (up to TOP SECRET/COMINT-GAMMA)
NSA tasking & reporting: Brazil
On July 4, 2015, Wikileaks published the transcript of entries from an NSA tasking database about high-level Brazilian targets. Unlike similar disclosures about France, Germany and Japan, no intelligence reports about Brazil were disclosed.
Article:
Document:
- Top Brazilian NSA Targets (no classification available)
NSA tasking & reporting: Japan
On July 31, 2015, Wikileaks, in collaboration with Süddeutsche Zeitung, l'Espresso, The Saturday Paper from Australia and the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, published the transcript of entries from an NSA tasking database, as well as intelligence reports about high-level Japanese targets.
Articles:
Documents:
- Top Japanese NSA Targets (no classification available)
- Top Japanese NSA Intercepts (TOP SECRET/COMINT)
Chinese cyber espionage against the US
On July 30 and August 10, 2015, NBC News published two slides about Chinese cyber espionage against over 600 US companies and government agencies, including access to the e-mail of top government officials since at least 2010.
This leak stands out because the slides are in digital form, and they support a story that shows the neccessity of NSA - which seems to point to an authorized leak.
Articles:
Documents:
- China: Cyber Exploitation and Attack Units (SECRET)
- U.S. Victims of Chinese Cyber Espionage (SECRET)
XKEYSCORE agreement between NSA, BND and BfV
On August 26, 2013, the German newspaper Die Zeit published the transcript of the Terms of Reference (ToR) about the use of NSA’s XKEYSCORE system by the German security service BfV.
Being a transcript and being about XKEYSCORE, this could be from the same source as the XKEYSCORE rules, but it’s also possible it came from a source within a German government agency.
Article:
Document:
- XKeyscore - the document (SECRET/COMINT)
The Drone Papers
On October 15, 2015, The Intercept published a series of documents with details about drone operations by the US military between 2011 and 2013.
In the Citizen Four we see Glenn Greenwald visiting Snowden in Moscow, telling him there’s a new source which revealed the role of Ramstein AFB in the drone program, including the chain of command diagram which is part of this batch of documents.
Articles:
Documents:
- Small Footprint Operations 2/13 (SECRET/NOFORN)
- Small Footprint Operations 5/13 (SECRET/NOFORN)
- Operation Haymaker (SECRET/NOFORN)
- Geolocation Watchlist (TOP SECRET/COMINT)
Cellphone surveillance catalogue
On December 17, 2015, The Intercept published a range of pages from a classified catalogue containing cellphone surveillance equipment, including IMSI-catchers like Stingrays and DRT boxes.
Just like the NCTC reports, The Intercept obtained this document from a “source within the intelligence community”.
Article:
Document:
- Government Cellphone Surveillance Catalogue (SECRET/NOFORN)
> See also: DRTBOX and the DRT surveillance systems
It is difficult to tell exactly from how many different leakers these documents come. The journalists involved will of course do everything to hide their source’s identity, including creating distraction and confusion, but also creating the impression that many other leakers followed the example of Edward Snowden.
Some thoughts on the form of the documents
Content-wise the documents from the alleged other sources are not very different from the ones from Snowden. But what seems to distinguish them most, is their form, which is either digital, a transcript or scanned from paper.
Digital
Almost all documents that were attributed to Snowden came in their original digital form (with some very few exceptions that were scanned from paper). This makes it remarkable that only two documents from the other sources are in a similar digital form.
The first one is the famous TAO Product Catalog with hacking and eavesdropping techniques, which also given its content comes closest to the Snowden documents. Despite that, this catalog was never attributed to him.
The other leak in digital form are the two slides about Chinese cyber espionage, but these probably come from a source in support of the US government.
Transcripts
A number of other leaks didn’t provide documents in their original form, but only transcripts thereof. This is the case for the following revelations:
- Chancellor Merkel tasking record
- XKEYSCORE rules: TOR and TAILS
- XKEYSCORE rules: New Zealand
- XKEYSCORE agreement between NSA, BND and BfV
The lists from an NSA tasking database with targets for France, Germany, Brazil and Japan are also transcripts, but for the intelligence reports, which Wikileaks published simultaneously, we have at least one example that is in its original format. All other ones came as transcripts.
Scanned from paper
All other documents that didn’t came from Snowden look like they were printed out (some were even recognized as being double-sided) and scanned again. This is the case for:
- NCTC watchlisting guidance
- NCTC terrorist watchlist report
- Ramstein AFB supporting drone operations
- The Drone Papers
- Cellphone surveillance catalogue
This doesn’t automatically mean they are all from the same source, as two of them are from the civilian NCTC and the other three are clearly from a military context.
We don’t know when or where these documents were printed out: maybe it was done by the leaker, for whom it could have been easier to exfiltrate them as hard copy, than on a detectable thumb drive.
It’s also possible that they were printed out by the press contact in order to make them look different from the Snowden documents. But on the other hand, publishing them in digital form would have made it more difficult to prove they were not from the Snowden cache.
Some thoughts on the motives behind the leaks
We can also take a look at the motives that could have been behind these leaks. Interestingly, these seem to correspond quite well with the different forms the documents have.
A second source
The disclosures of the transcriptions of the XKEYSCORE rules and the tasking database lists are quite far from being in the public interest. They are about legitimate targets of foreign intelligence and publishing them seems solely meant to discredit the NSA and/or damage US foreign relationships.
The same applies to the TAO Product Catalog, which contains devices and methods that are only used against “hard targets” that cannot be reached by other means, so this is not about spying on ordinary citizens, but does compromise valid US intelligence operations.
At first sight, one would assume that these documents were from the Snowden cache, but published by people like Appelbaum and an organization like Wikileaks, who have a more radical approach than Snowden himself, and maybe therefore could have pretended they came from another source.
However, both Greenwald and security expert Bruce Schneier said these documents were really provided by another leaker. Because a number of them were published by German media, Schneier guesses it might be “either an NSA employee or contractor working in Germany, or someone from German intelligence who has access to NSA documents”.
If that’s the case, then it’s not only remarkable that there’s a second source from within or close to NSA, but also that this source is apparently fine with leaking documents that show no abuses, but only seriously harm US interests - which is either treason, or the work of a hostile intelligence agency. Snowden at least acted from his concern about increasing mass surveillance on innocent civilians.
A third source
The documents that are scanned from paper are a somewhat different story. These are about issues that concern a wider range of people. For some of them, The Intercept even gives the reason why the source leaked them: for the cellphone surveillance catalogue it was because of a concern about militarization of domestic law enforcement.
For the drone papers, the source is cited saying: “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting […] assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield”. Given that he mentions watchlists, it seems very well possible that this source actually also leaked the two NCTC reports about terrorist databases and watchlists.
Combining this with the fact that both the NCTC reports and the cellphone surveillance catalog were from a source “within the intelligence community” seems to confirm that all the documents that came as scanned from paper are from the same leaker - maybe someone from a military intelligence agency like the DIA.
Conclusion
Given these thoughts on the form of the leaked documents and the possible motives behind these leaks, it seems that they can be attributed to at least three other sources, beside Snowden:
Source nr. 1 (Edward Snowden)
Source nr. 2 (German NSA employee or hostile intelligence?)
- Chancellor Merkel tasking record
- TAO product catalog
- XKEYSCORE rules: TOR and TAILS
- XKEYSCORE rules: New Zealand
- NSA tasking & reporting France/Germany/Brazil/Japan
- XKEYSCORE agreement between NSA, BND and BfV
Source nr. 3 (someone from US military intelligence?)
- NCTC watchlisting guidance
- NCTC terrorist watchlist report
- Ramstein AFB supporting drone operations
- The Drone Papers
- Cellphone surveillance catalogue
Source nr. 4 (someone from the US government?)
- Chinese cyber espionage
Links and Sources
- Schneier.com: The US Intelligence Community has a Third Leaker
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