Snowden publishes NSA documents that show that Bitcoin was the "number 1 priority."

This is an exciting world that reflects many things in the ecosystem of cryptocurrencies. Therefore, talk about Xkeyscore. MAC addresses. OAKSTAR MONKEYROCKET, you can clear doubts. Edward Snowden is in that again. This time around, the world's most notorious whistleblower delivered the National Security Agency (NSA) documentation to the The Intercept research news channel that reveals a covert and invasive program to track bitcoin users using spyware that he discovered during his infamous first round. The implications include the future of privacy along with unauthorized data collection used to prosecute bitcoiners such as Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road.

Snowden reveals how Bitcoin users are tracked by NSA. Do you ever have the feeling that you are being observed? The Acting Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Brian de Vallance, in a letter to Congress in November 2013, expressed concern that "with the advent of virtual currencies and the ease with which criminal organizations can exploit financial transactions, DHS recognized the need for an aggressive stance towards this evolving trend. " The unaccepted whistleblower, Edward Snowden, seems to have found a treasure trove of highly censored and classified NSA documents that attest to that "aggressive stance".

It is appropriate for Mr. Snowden to share them with The Intercept, an online research news organization founded by his benefactor, lawyer-turned-journalist Glenn Greenwald. Mr. Greenwald was writing for The Guardian, and the two unleashed and showed the largest amount of government security documents ever released on global surveillance of the United States and the United Kingdom.

Interestingly, the documents tracking bitcoin users come more or less from the same period, 2013. They detail that bitcoiners around the world were targeted by expanded powers and that they might even have begun to play a role in early cryptography, processing as Ross Ulbricht and Silk Road.

Patrick Toomey, of the American Civil Liberties Union, of his National Security Project, explained: "If the criminal investigations of the government depended secretly on the espionage of the NSA, that would be a serious concern." People facing a criminal prosecution have the right to know how the government arrived with the evidence, so they can question whether the government's methods were legal. That is a basic principle of due process. The government should not be hiding the true sources of their evidence in the courts by inventing a different path. "

Raw and global Internet traffic. Readers in recent years have thrown themselves into a pivot. One should not admire the aspect of the bitcoin coin, but rather the blockchain technology or some other related innovation. However, from the beginning, Bitcoin must be digital cash, a direct way to undermine governments and their cartelized banking system. In the accounts of the popular press, this aspect has been minimized and almost forgotten. Until now.

It seems that the NSA has focused on what is important or novel about bitcoin, and it is not blockchain. And since Mr. Snowden's initial revelations about the Agency's extensive data collection and data collection programs, enthusiasts have always suspected that something like this was happening in crypto. Sentences of documents filled with snippets such as "help trace senders and receivers of Bitcoins" will only feed more speculation.

"The data source seems to have taken advantage of the NSA's ability to collect and analyze the raw and global Internet traffic while exploiting an unnamed software program that purported to provide anonymity to users, according to other documents," Sam Intercept of The Intercept He wrote, and noted that "Bitcoin is the # 1 priority" over other cryptocurrencies, according to the documents.

The information collected was not only about transactions. In fact, "the follow-up may also have involved the compilation of intimate details of the computers of these users."

The NSA collected the passwords information of some Bitcoin users, the Internet activity and a type of unique device identification number known as a MAC address, "explains Mr. Biddle. A MAC address is also known as a media access control address, a unique hardware identifier.