New Film Tells the Story of Edward Snowden; Here Are the Surveillance Programs He Helped Expose

Source: The Intercept

OLIVER STONE’S LATEST film, “Snowden,” bills itself as a dramatized version of the life of Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who revealed the global extent of U.S. surveillance capabilities.

Stone’s rendering of Snowden’s life combines facts with Hollywood invention, covering Snowden being discharged from the military after an injury in basic training, meeting his girlfriend, and training in the CIA with fictitious mentors (including Nicolas Cage’s character, most likely a composite of whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and Bill Binney). Snowden then goes undercover, only to see an op turn ugly; becomes a contractor for the CIA and NSA; and finally chooses to leave the intelligence community and disclose its vast surveillance apparatus, some of which he helped develop.

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So here’s a retrospective of sorts for moviegoers and others interested in the journalism Edward Snowden made possible through his decision to become a whistleblower: In all, over 150 articles from 23 news organizations worldwide have incorporated documents provided by Snowden, and The Intercept and other outlets continue to mine the archive for stories of social and political significance.

In the hope that Stone’s movie will spark more widespread interest in the NSA programs Snowden helped bring to light, The Intercept has compiled its stories based on the archive of documents, which can be explored through the chart below.

Published Article Code Names
2/14/14 The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program GILGAMESH, SHENANIGANS, VICTORYDANCE
2/18/14 Snowden Documents Reveal Covert Surveillance and Pressure Tactics Aimed at WikiLeaks and Its Supporters ANTICRISIS GIRL, TEMPORA, XKEYSCORE
2/24/14 How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations
3/7/14 The NSA Has an Advice Columnist. Seriously.
3/12/14 How the NSA Plans to Infect “Millions” of Computers With Malware CAPTIVATEDAUDIENCE, FOGGYBOTTOM, FOXACID, GROK, GUMFISH, HAMMERCHANT, HAMMERSTEIN, QUANTUM, QUANTUMCOPPER, QUANTUMHAND, QUANTUMSKY, SADDLEBACK, SECONDDATE, SOCIALIST, STELLARWIND, TURBINE, TURMOIL, UNITEDRAKE, VALIDATOR, WILLOWVIXEN
3/13/14 Foreign Officials in the Dark About Their Own Spy Agencies’ Cooperation With NSA PRISM, TEMPORA
3/15/14 Compare the NSA’s Facebook Malware Denial to Its Own Secret Documents QUANTUMHAND, QUANTUMTHEORY, TURBINE
3/20/14 Inside the NSA’s Secret Efforts to Hunt and Hack System Administrators QUANTUM
4/4/14 The “Cuban Twitter” Scam Is a Drop in the Internet Propaganda Bucket ROYAL CONCIERGE, SALAMANCA
4/30/14 British Spy Chiefs Secretly Begged to Play in NSA’s Data Pools BLARNEY, GHOSTMACHINE, PRISM, STORMBREW,
5/19/14 Data Pirates of the Caribbean: The NSA Is Recording Every Cellphone Call in the Bahamas MYSTIC, SOMALGET
7/9/14 Meet the Muslim-American Leaders the FBI and NSA Have Been Spying On
7/14/14 Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies Seek to Control the Internet ANGRY PIRATE, CHANGELING, ELATE, GATEWAY, GESTATOR, IMPERIAL BARGE, PREDATORS FACE, ROLLING THUNDER, SLIPSTREAM, SPRING BISHOP, UNDERPASS
7/23/14 The NSA’s New Partner in Spying: Saudi Arabia’s Brutal State Police
8/3/14 Cash, Weapons, and Surveillance: The U.S. Is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack YESTERNIGHT
8/5/14 NPR Is Laundering CIA Talking Points to Make You Scared of NSA Reporting
8/25/14 ICREACH: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google CRISSCROSS, GLOBALREACH, ICREACH, PROTON,
9/14/14 The NSA and GCHQ Campaign Against German Satellite Companies TREASURE MAP
9/15/14 New Zealand Launched Mass Surveillance Project While Publicly Denying It SPEARGUN, XKEYSCORE
10/10/14 Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany SENTRYCONDOR, SENTRYEAGLE, SENTRYHAWK, SENTRYOSPREY, SENTRYRAVEN
12/4/14 Operation AURORAGOLD: How the NSA Hacks Cellphone Networks Worldwide AURORAGOLD, OPULANT PUP, WOLFRAMITE
12/13/14 Operation Socialist: How GCHQ Spies Hacked Belgium’s Largest Telco HACIENDA, HOPSCOTCH, LEGSPIN, NOCTURNAL SURGE, STELLARWIND, SOCIALIST
2/4/15 Western Spy Agencies Secretly Rely on Hackers for Intel and Expertise INTOLERANT, LOVELY HORSE
2/10/15 NSA Claims Iran Learned From Western Cyberattacks
2/19/15 The Great SIM Heist: How Spies Stole the Keys to the Encryption Castle DAPINO GAMMA, HIGHLAND FLING, XKEYSCORE
3/10/15 iSpy: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple’s Secrets DREAMY SMURF, NOSEY SMURF, PARANOID SMURF, TRACKER SMURF, WARRIORPRIDE
4/2/15 Britain Used Spy Team to Shape Latin American Public Opinion on Falklands QUITO
5/5/15 The Computers Are Listening: How the NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text RHINEHART
5/11/15 The Computers Are Listening: Speech Recognition Is NSA’s Best-Kept Open Secret
6/8/15 The Computers Are Listening: NSA Won’t Say If It Automatically Transcribes American Phone Calls In Bulk PRISM, UPSTREAM
5/8/15 U.S. Government Labeled Al Jazeera Journalist as Al Qaeda SKYNET
5/18/15 Snowden Files Give New Details on Osama Bin Laden Raid
5/21/15 The NSA Plan to Find Bin Laden by Hiding Tracking Devices in Medical Supplies
5/28/15 Inside NSA, Officials Privately Criticize “Collect It All” Surveillance
6/22/15 Controversial GCHQ Unit Engaged in Domestic Law Enforcement, Online Propaganda, Psychology Research
6/22/15 Popular Security Software Came Under Relentless NSA and GCHQ Attacks CAMBERDADA, PRISM
6/22/15 Spies Hacked Computers Thanks to Sweeping Secret Warrants, Aggressively Stretching U.K. Law
6/26/15 How the NSA Started Investigating the New York Times’s Warrantless Wiretapping Story
7/1/15 XKEYSCORE: NSA’s Google for the World’s Private Communications BADASS, NUCLEON, XKEYSCORE
7/15/15 Israeli Special Forces Assassinated Senior Syrian Official
8/3/15 GCHQ and Me: My Life Unmasking British Eavesdroppers CARBOY, FROSTING, ECHELON, SHAMROCK, SOUNDER, TRANSIENT
8/11/15 The Philosopher of Surveillance: What Happens When a Failed Writer Becomes a Loyal Spy?
9/25/15 From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities BLACKHOLE, INFINITE MONKEYS, KARMA POLICE, MARBLED GECKO, MEMORY HOLE, MUTANT BROTH, SAMUEL PEPYS, SOCIAL ANTHROPOID, TEMPORA, XKEYSCORE
9/28/15 Did a Rogue NSA Operation Cause the Death of a Greek Telecom Employee? SENTRYOWL
11/18/15 Overwhelmed NSA Surprised to Discover Its Own Surveillance “Goldmine” on Venezuela’s Oil Executives CADENCE, PINWALE
1/28/16 Israeli Drone Feeds Hacked by British and American Intelligence ANARCHIST
5/16/16 NSA Closely Involved in Guantánamo Interrogations, Documents Show
6/7/16 Facing Data Deluge, Secret U.K. Spying Report Warned of Intelligence Failure MILKWHITE, PRESTON
6/28/16 The Hunter: He Was a Hacker for the NSA and He Was Willing to Talk. I Was Willing to Listen
8/15/16 In Bungled Spying Operation, NSA Targeted Pro-Democracy Campaigner PRISM
8/19/16 The NSA Leak Is Real, Snowden Documents Confirm BADDECISION, BLINDDATE, ELIGIBLE BOMBSHELL, FOXACID, MAGICBEAN, MAGIC SQUIRREL, NIGHTSTAND, POLARSNEEZE, SECONDDATE, TURBINE
9/6/16 Inside Menwith Hill: The NSA’s British Base at the Heart of U.S. Targeted Killing GHOSTHUNTER, GHOSTWOLF

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Ultimately, the movie reflects Stone’s image of the life of an NSA contract employee. For a real window into the agency, there may be no better resource than the NSA’s own documents. In May 2016, The Intercept began the first concerted effort to make large portions of the Snowden archive available to the public with the release of a set of SIDtoday newsletters, the internal news organ of the Signals Intelligence Directorate at the NSA. The batch releases are ongoing and will likely constitute one of the largest single collections of NSA files.

Read more: https://theintercept.com/2016/09/16/new-film-tells-the-story-of-edward-snowden-here-are-the-surveillance-programs-he-helped-expose/