Fugitive ex-NSA intelligence analyst turned whistleblower Edward Snowden has blown the cover off a covert Internet spying operation called Levitation that tracks uploads and downloads, including those from popular social media sites.
Documents revealed by Snowden show Levitation intercepts Internet files and analyzes up to 15 million downloads daily from persons of interest using the Internet and popular websites such as YouTube and Facebook.
The aim of the operation is to identify terrorists and extremists that have to either download or upload videos, photographs, music and other files as they gather or send data about topics such as bomb-making, for instance.
In doing so, however, Levitation intercepts massive volumes of data showing uploads and downloads made by innocent Internet users not suspected of any wrongdoing.
Levitation monitors downloads in countries across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and North America. It's being conducted by Canada's little known equivalent of the NSA, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), said the website The Intercept.
Canada is a member of the so-called "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance that also includes the U.S., Britain, New Zealand and Australia. Five Eyes is also known by the acronym, FVEY.
Documents made public by Snowden in 2013 reveal FVEY have been spying on their citizens and sharing information with each other to circumvent domestic regulations on domestic spying.
Snowden's latest revelation is the first that sheds more light on the role of the CSE. Canada is currently pushing for more security powers after terrorist attacks in Ottawa and Quebec last year.
"Every single thing that you do -- in this case uploading/downloading files to these sites -- that act is being archived, collected and analyzed," according to Ron Deibert, director of University of Toronto-based Internet security think tank Citizen Lab, who spoke to RT.
"The problem with mass surveillance is when you collect everything, you understand nothing," Snowden said.