Turbulence (NSA)

National Security Agency surveillance
Programs Pre-2001 ECHELON Main Core MINARET SHAMROCK PROMIS Since 2001 BLARNEY RAGTIME Turbulence PINWALE MAINWAY Upstream Since 2007 PRISM Boundless Informant X-Keyscore Dropmire Fairview Stateroom Surveillance Detection Unit Bullrun MYSTIC MonsterMind (alleged) GCHQ collaboration MUSCULAR Dishfire Tempora Mastering the Internet Global Telecoms Exploitation Discontinued Trailblazer Project ThinThread President's Surveillance Program Terrorist Surveillance Program STELLARWIND
Legislation FISA Protect America Act of 2007 FISA Amendments Act of 2008 Patriot Act
Institutions FISC Senate Intelligence Committee
Lawsuits ACLU v. NSA Hepting v. AT&T Jewel v. NSA Clapper v. Amnesty Klayman v. Obama ACLU v. Clapper
Whistleblowers William Binney Thomas Drake Mark Klein Edward Snowden Thomas Tamm Russ Tice
Publication 2005 warrantless surveillance scandal 2013 mass surveillance scandal
Related Cablegate Surveillance of reporters Mail tracking UN diplomatic spying Insider Threat Program Mass surveillance in the United States
Concepts SIGINT Metadata
Collaboration United States CSS CYBERCOM DOJ FBI CIA DHS IAO Five Eyes CSEC GCHQ ASD GCSB Other DGSE BND

A reference to Turbulence and Turmoil in an XKeyscore slide.

Turbulence is a United States National Security Agency (NSA) information-technology project started circa 2005. It was developed in small, inexpensive "test" pieces rather than one grand plan like its failed predecessor, the Trailblazer Project. It also includes offensive cyber-warfare capabilities, like injecting malware into remote computers. The U.S. Congress criticized the project in 2007 for having similar bureaucratic problems as the Trailblazer Project.^[1]

Criticism

According to Siobhan Gorman in a 2007 Baltimore Sun article, "The conclusion in Congress, two former government officials said, was that Turbulence was over budget, not delivering and poorly led, and that there was little or no strategy to pull it all together."^[2]

Link to Trailblazer

Trailblazer, the predecessor of Turbulence, had been cancelled in 2006 after a congressional investigation and a Defense Department's Inspector General's report found it over budget, wasteful, and ineffective.^[1][3]

One of the Trailblazer whistleblowers who helped with the inspector-general report, Thomas Andrews Drake, was later charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 for allegedly retaining five documents in his home. Two of those documents were about Turbulence; his defense pointed out that one of these documents was clearly marked "UNCLASSIFIED" and the other was declassified shortly after his indictment.^[3] Thomas Drake plead to a misdemeanor count of unauthorized use of a computer on June 10, 2011, and was sentenced to one year probation.^[4]

Programs

Turbulence includes nine core programs, of which names are known:^[2]

• TURMOIL
  • Turmoil is involved in the process of decrypting communications.^[5]
• TUTELAGE
• TRAFFICTHIEF
  • According to an XKeyscore presentation, TRAFFICTHIEF is a database of "Meta-data from a subset of tasked strong-selectors" ^[6] According to the XKeyscore presentation, an example of a strong selector is an email address. In other words, it would be a database of the metadata associated with names, phone numbers, email addresses, etc., that the intelligence services are specifically targeting. Marc Ambinder gives what he calls an educated guess: "raw SIGINT viewer for data analysis." ^[7]

• A reference to TRAFFICTHIEF in an XKeyscore slide

• A Reference to TRAFFICTHIEF in a PRISM slide

• A reference to Turmoil in an NSA presentation

• Memo celebrating the launch of TURBULENCE, Mentions TURMOIL, TUTELAGE, XKEYSCORE, and TAO

• FAIRVIEW presentation: reference to TURMOIL

• Technical details of MUSCULAR, reference to TURMOIL

See also

• ECHELON
• DCSNet
• Red Hook
• Stellar Wind
• Thinthread
• William Binney
• Mark Klein
• Edward Snowden
• Thomas Tamm
• Russ Tice

References

External links

• Democracy Now interview with whistleblower William Binney

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