Top-secret Snowden docs reveal NSA's 'all-encompassing campaign' to track 'entire business chain' of Internet cafes

Secret government documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden continue to make waves. The Intercept published a new batch of 294 articles from SIDtoday, the internal news site of the National Security Agency’s core Signals Intelligence Directorate.

The latest revelations come over three years since The Guardian and The Washington Post were awarded the Pulitzer prize for public service journalism based upon Snowden’s revelations about NSA spying.

The US intelligence community "routinely thwarted" efforts of the NSA's AIRCAP system's design to mask identities online, reporters Micah Lee, Margot Williams and Talya Cooper explain.

The NSA also targeted "the entire business chain" of internet cafes in Iraq and beyond.

"While hiding, or at least trying to hide, its own online operations, the NSA launched an all-encompassing campaign to trace online activity in internet cafes, down to specific seats," The Intercept explained. "The NSA knew the precise location of over 400 internet cafes. For over 50 of these cafes, it could locate a target to a specific seat within the cafe"

NSA has also surveilled internet cafes in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.

"In addition to its own electronic spying within Iraq, the NSA sought to rebuild the country’s ability to spy on itself through another joint project with the CIA, along with GCHQ," The Intercept noted. "The Western intelligence entities would build a new Iraqi spy agency, dubbed the Iraq SIGINT Element, according to another SIDtoday article."