The slide contains a rough map of North America, showing the underseas cables fanning out from the West and East coasts of the United States, to the rest of the world.

These undersea cables are essential to worldwide data flows – and to the surveillance capabilities of the U.S. government and its allies.

Agreements with private companies protect U.S. access to cables’ data for surveillance

This “Network Security Agreement,” signed in September 2003 by Global Crossing, became a model for other deals over the past decade as foreign investors increasingly acquired pieces of the world’s telecommunications infrastructure.

The security agreement for Global Crossing, whose fiber-optic network connected 27 nations and four continents, required the company to have a “Network Operations Center” on U.S. soil that could be visited by government officials with 30 minutes of warning. Surveillance requests, meanwhile, had to be handled by U.S. citizens screened by the government and sworn to secrecy — in many cases prohibiting information from being shared even with the company’s executives and directors.

美国《华盛顿邮报》7月10日爆料称，除了“棱镜”计划外，美国情报机构还有一个名为“上游”

***棱镜有一个“哥哥”

这篇报道公布了一张美国国家安全局的机密幻灯片，其中对“棱镜”计划、以及与之平行展开的“上游”计划有所介绍。

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