How Advertisers' Cookies Are Helping the NSA's Data-Collection Efforts
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On July 1, The Intercept published an expos on and NSA program it called, “The NSA’s Google for the World’s Private Communications.” It turns out advertisers and the data they rely on are facilitating the government’s bulk surveillance.
The National Security Agency’s XKeyscore program, first reported by The Guardian, is designed to collect and analyze global Internet traffic. Along with information on the breadth and scale of the NSA’s data collection, The Intercept revealed how the NSA relies on unencrypted cookie data to identify users:
“The NSA’s ability to piggyback off of private companies’ tracking of their own users is a vital instrument that allows the agency to trace the data it collects to individual users. It makes no difference if visitors switch to public Wi-Fi networks or connect to VPNs to change their IP addresses: the tracking cookie will follow them around as long as they are using the same web browser and fail to clear their cookies.”
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