Stateroom (surveillance program)
STATEROOM is the code name of a highly secretive signals intelligence collection program involving the interception of international radio, telecommunications and Internet traffic. It is operated out of the diplomatic missions of the signatories to the UKUSA Agreement and the members of the ECHELON network including Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
In almost 100 U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide, Stateroom operations are conducted by the Special Collection Service, a unit that is jointly operated by the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.
According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the true mission of Stateroom personnel is generally not revealed to the rest of the diplomatic staff at the facilities where they are assigned.
Members
- – Australian Signals Directorate, formerly known as the Defence Signals Directorate
- – Communications Security Establishment
- – Government Communications Headquarters
- – Special Collection Service
- – Government Communications Security Bureau
Operations
Note: The list of locations in the following section is non-exhaustive, and only includes publicly disclosed information.Australia
The collection of signals intelligence by Australian embassies and high commissions occurs in capital cities across East Asia and Southeast Asia, namely:Bangkok, Beijing, Dili, Hanoi, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Port Moresby
Canada
In the 1980s, surveys were conducted by Canada's CSE agency to pick out Canadian embassies suitable to function as surveillance posts.New Zealand
As of 16 March 2015, New Zealand's GCSB agency had a secret listening post, codenamed "Caprica", at the New Zealand High Commission in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands. The "Caprica" outpost was reportedly modeled after the NSA's Stateroom outposts at selected United States embassies across the world.United Kingdom
As of 2013, British embassies and consulates in the following capital cities are known to contain clandestine surveillance facilities:Data collected by Britain is sent to a relay facility at RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire, England, before being transmitted to a data center jointly operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. National Security Agency in College Park, Maryland.
United States
In the United States, the U.S. Special Collection Service contributes to Stateroom. The SCS is jointly operated by the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. On 23 November 2013, the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad released a top secret NSA presentation leaked by Edward Snowden, which shows the presence of SCS operations in numerous U.S. diplomatic missions located in the following cities:Athens, Bangkok, Berlin, Brasília, Budapest, Frankfurt, Geneva, Lagos, Milan, New Delhi, Paris, Prague, Vienna, Zagreb.
In October 2013, reports by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden led to the revelation of the SCS having systematically wiretapped Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel's private cell phone over a period of over 10 years, among other activities to wiretap and systematically record large amounts of European and South American leaders' and citizens' communications.
Other SCS locations include Baku, Kyiv, Madrid, Moscow, Pristina, Rome, Sarajevo, Tbilisi, and Tirana.