There are two major governmental or state-sponsored components in the mass surveillance ecosystem. The first is America’s premier domestic surveillance agency, the one and only National Security Agency. The National Security Agency is the largest and most influential actor in the surveillance system. They oversee a staggering amount of collection sites in the homeland US to monitor internet traffic at an unprecedented scale (NSA Special Source Operations - Various Documents), and spend 10.6 billion in National Intelligence Program funds alone. (Black Budget for 2013)

The second component is the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, consisting of America, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. Five Eyes may partially be of foreign origin, but it serves to enforce the domestic capabilities of the NSA in situations that may otherwise be legally dubious. By allowing foreign agencies to spy on American citizens and share the data with the American government, the Five Eyes Alliance forms a bilateral stream of data collection that bypasses domestic restrictions. (Davidson NSA files: Australian spies scooped up thousands of email accounts to help US)

The third component is unique because it is non-governmental: large technology corporations. These corporations (which include Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook) are a relatively new piece of the surveillance system but are undeniably powerful. Before the advent of the internet, government spying was almost solely tasked to state sponsored actors throughout the process—from collection of intelligence to acting on what was gathered. The rise of the internet and it’s subsequent monopolization by tech companies offered a sudden and lucrative opportunity for the government spies. The monopoly these companies had over a simply unprecedented amount of data was of paramount interest to state-sponsored actors looking to extend their reach and broaden their spying. Even for a company like Google, who once touted the motto “Don’t Be Evil”, the allure of government cash outweighed any moral objections that would have stood in the way of their collaboration. The role of corporate actors is so significant that it will be covered separately in the Corporate Lies section.