How intelligence agencies (like the NSA) get their data to spy on people? How are they able to get private data that are protected and encrypted?
In: Technology
Most of the time, they get the information from the source. While your traffic may be encrypted between you and the service you’re talking to, it is usually recoverable from that service directly.
So if the NSA wants a list of your posts on Facebook, they send a request to Meta who will then provide all the information they have on you. This will also include information you may have deleted but that has not been removed from the Meta servers and governments often place requirements on platforms like Facebook to retain this data for long periods of time.
Text messages are not encrypted (lots of legacy reasons for this, the main one being the inventors didn’t think any normal users would actually use them) and so can be recovered directly from telcos. Most telcos will also have a provision to intercept voice calls without needing stingray style devices but this does require a warrant and probable cause.
End to end encrypted messaging platforms like WhatsApp cannot have the messages or calls intercepted but some services will still store and release metadata. So Meta will tell the NSA who you are speaking to even if what you’re talking about can’t be recovered.
If you backup your messages to iCloud / Google Drive without encryption, then they can request a copy of the backup from these companies and get the messages that way or they can recover the messages from either person’s phone as again even deleted messages are stored in the database locally on the phone
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