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If you work for a useful target yes they probably have hacked you. They've certainly hacked google in the past for example - see below. These agencies are lawless and motivated. I imagine knowing where targets stay/travel in advance could be very useful.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/...

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There has never been a documented case through leaks or otherwise that they do domestic hacking, including in all the links you are providing.

What is domestic and what is not? Is a company with assets abroad domestic or fair game abroad? You are aware these agencies share most data across borders aren't you?

Tempora is domestic hacking, Stellar Wind is domestic hacking (sweeping up data from all Americans), and these agencies share data extensively, so domestic vs foreign has very little meaning to them at least.

No, interception and wiretapping (especially with permission of the service provider) are not the same thing as hacking a company to maintain persistent access and surreptitiously using their assets to exfiltrate data. These are very different things and the distinction matters.

I’m familiar with what kinds of things they do, and I don’t agree that they should be doing a lot of what they do. It’s just that rooting american assets isn’t one of those.

Also, you have the wrong country for Tempora.

The agencies extensively share data and routinely break domestic laws. They even use sharing as a way of getting around domestic restrictions.

Like, why go through the effort to hack domestic companies when you can just subpoena them?

A reasonable question. There are many answers. My first one would be for leverage. E.g. To solve a crime, they want information from someone who is not under formal investigation. That someone may not voluntarily cooperate, so they use information for leverage. E.g. threaten to leak information about a pending business deal to others in the transaction. It's not very effective for Joe Sixpack, but it is for organized crime of all kinds.

"Reports that NSA taps into Google and Yahoo data hubs infuriate tech giants"

Files obtained from Edward Snowden suggest NSA can collect information sent by fibre optic cable between Google and Yahoo data hubs 'at will'...

Citing documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with officials, the Washington Post claimed the agency could collect information "at will" from among hundreds of millions of user accounts.

The documents suggest that the NSA, in partnership with its British counterpart GCHQ, is copying large amounts of data as it flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the worldwide data centers of the Silicon Valley giants. The intelligence activities of the NSA outside the US are subject to fewer legal constraints than its domestic actions.

31 October 2013

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/30/google-re...

If only the Snowden docs included all the nasty domestic spying that the agencies do, I'm sure we would have substantial proof.

There are leaked government slides about how they were monitoring Wikipedia traffic (illegally).

>They've certainly hacked google in the past for example - see below.

You've referenced proof they couldn't hack Google and instead they had to use alternative measures.

>Google is understood to be working on "forward encryption" for its private network so that communications even over its private leased lines would be unintelligible to anyone without the "keys" to decrypt it.

That's basically the reason it was even possible. Such surveillance is not a hack.

>These agencies are lawless

Citation needed

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clapper#Testimony_to_Con...]

This doesn’t relate to the topic in question.

I was asked for an example of the organization being lawless, I gave a concrete example of the organization failing the most basic of accountability measures: Being asked under oath about their processes. The leader of the organization lied. I think that's a decent indictment of the organization.

Here you go:

Stellar Wind, Tempora, Prism.

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000001733041/the-pr...

This is a particularly interesting profile of Binney, who worked on stellar wind.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2018/09/13/uk-ma...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23123964

Of course they claimed after being exposed that these programs are legal, but I think lawless is apt as these agencies don't consider the law as a boundary they need to respect.

O tempora, o mores

Excellent long form piece that covers several of these topics as well.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/23/the-secret-sha...

Prism requires a warrant for US targets. Sounds far from lawless to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...

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