Seemingly yes, I don't know if they continue, yes, and yes. I think that my IP at least is probably on a list, along with a lot of other HN readers. This is a

Seemingly yes, I don't know if they continue, yes, and yes. I think that my IP at least is probably on a list, along with a lot of other HN readers. This is a mid-2014 story which didn't get a ton of press traction, I assume for no deeper reason than "people were burned out on specifics-of-surveillance stories after 2013". Original source [1, 2] was Tagesschau, a branch of German public broadcasting, by two high-profile German journalists and Jacob Appelbaum. (People other than Applebaum did review the technical side of things. [3]) It's since run in the standard English publications (Ars, TechDirt, El Reg, etc). I first got it from Bruce Schneier. [4] The document source is somewhat unclear; the publisher hasn't said and it doesn't appear to be from Snowden's leaks. It was published around the time the TAO leaks started. But the document's accuracy (and that of the TAO leaks) is undisputed, and the NSA responded by defending the program instead of denying the report. [5] The surveillance targets were numerous: emails, page visits, usage, and web searches variously relating to Tor, Tails (which was described as "advocated by extremists"), proxy services, and even the Linux Journal! The surveillance scope is unclear; the outlined system targets the full data of a single action then logs the IP for possible followup. One published code segment used deep packet inspection to find emails with links to the Tor homepage, then extracted the full body of those emails. This collection was part of XKeyscore, and presumably had the same targeting standards as the larger program. [4, 5] As for being on a list, the Tor-homepage email filter had an exemption for IPs based in Five Eyes countries. But the other's didn't, so domestic users would presumably have at least been flagged. [4] The presence of a location filter in one tool sort of implies location wasn't being filtered later in the flow, but it's also possible non-email mediums were being filtered in other ways. The NSA statement was of course unhelpful, but includes "The communications of people who are not foreign intelligence targets are of no use to the agency." Given the NSA history of exact-words paltering, it seems significant that it calls those other communications useless, but doesn't say they're not collected. [5] So yes; I think a large fraction of techies and Linux fans probably are on lists for completely innocuous searches. [1] http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/nsa-xkeyscore-100.html http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/nsa-xkeyscore-100.html [2] https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/nsa-xkeyscore-100.html&usg=ALkJrhi2ET6hGN6WzIfHvDy0LolUr8-02g https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&... [3] http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/nsa230_page-1.html http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/nsa230_page-1.html [4] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/07/nsa_targets_pri.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/07/nsa_targets_p... [5] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/report-rare-leaked-nsa-source-code-reveals-tor-servers-targeted/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/report-rare-leak...