As per recent reports, National Security Agency(NSA) has been secretly tracking bitcoin transactions around the world. Former NSA employee Edward Snowden has revealed classified documents which talk about NSA specifically monitoring the activity of bitcoin users.
The Intercept media was the first to have access to the classified document, which was created in March 2013. To monitor the activity of bitcoins, the NSA used the Monkeyrocket program, which in turn was part of the Oakstar program, which allowed the agency to monitor communications, including the collection of Internet data while transmitting over fiber cables. optics.
The NSA specified that part of the Monkeyrocket strategy was to attract targets involved in terrorist activities in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. This software program, whose name is unknown, cheated bitcoin users to “use a tool that, they thought, was going to provide them with anonymity online but actually channeled the data directly to the NSA,” writes The Intercept.
Although the agency was interested in surveilling some competing cryptocurrencies, “Bitcoin is #1 priority,”
-statement published in The Intercept
At the technical level, the fact of being able to trace the origin and destination of an illicit Bitcoin transaction would be practically impossible, and beyond moral problems. This would break the idea of anonymity of the transactions of the bitcoin network. In addition, this would open the door for the NSA to track transactions that may not come from illicit activities.