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Yet, in June 2013, the NSA found that envelope had been breached by Snowden who deliberately compromised three programs that it used to keep track of terrorist organizations around the world. The first system he divulged, and the one which though it received the most public attention, did the least damage, was what the NSA called the 215 program because it had been authorized by section 215 of the Patriot Act of 2001. This program amassed, the billing records of every phone call made in America that could be used as a data base by the FBI. The idea was that when any foreigner on the FBI’s watch list of terrorists called anyone in the U.S. the FBI could trace that person’s entire chain of telephone contacts to try to determine if he was connected to a terrorist cell. There was, however, a major flaw in this program: it did not cover e-mail and other Internet messaging, which 2013 had largely replaced telephone calls. In addition, terrorist organizations had become fully aware of the vulnerability of telephoning overseas. So although the NSA could cite a handful of early successes that “215” yielded, Snowden’s exposure of it did only limited damage/

But Snowden did not stop with “215.” He next did vastly more damage by exposing the PRISM program also called “702” since it was authorized in 2007 by section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.) Since a large part of the fiber cables on which the world’s Internet runs pass through the United States, the NSA was able to intercept 91 percent of its data, including Google searches, social media postings, Skype conversations, messages on Xbox Live, Instant messaging services, tweets on Twitter and e-mails. The CIA and FBI could then track the movements of foreign terrorists. Up until June 6, 2014, terrorist groups presumably were unaware of the NSA’s capacity to vacuum in even encrypted parts of the Internet since they used it for their lethal planning. This ignorance gave U.S intelligence an important edge in pre-empting terrorist actions. According to the testimony of General Alexander, data intercepted under PRISM helped detect and thwart no fewer than 45 terrorist attacks prior to Snowden’s making this capability known.

The third NSA program of interest to Jihadists that Snowden revealed was called XKeyscore. Using Internet data from PRISM, it created the equivalent of digital fingerprints for suspected foreign terrorists based on their search patterns on the Internet. This made it difficult for a terrorist suspect to hide on the Internet. He might attempt to evade surveillance by using a different computer and another name but, unknown to him, the XKeyscore algorithms would continue to track him under his new alias.

To even further enable furtive Internet users evade surveillance, Snowden provided in an interview specific data about the secret sources and methods used both the NSA and British GCHQ. He revealed, for example that the GCHQ had deployed the first "full-take" Internet interceptor that “snarfs everything, in a rolling buffer to allow retroactive investigation without missing a single bit.” When asked how to circumvent it, he replied: “you should never route through or peer with the UK under any circumstances. Their fibers are radioactive, and even the Queen’s selfies to the pool boy get logged.” Aside from this warning about using Internet providers whose wiring passes through Britain, he also warned Internet users against using the services of American Internet companies since the NSA considered “telecom collaborators to be

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