https://theintercept.com/2017/04/24/japans-secret-deals-with-the-nsa-that-ex... Japan both 0wn3d and embarassed, documents in link. According to the agency’s documents, its relationship with Japan dates back to the 1950s. NSA’s presence in the country was for many years managed out of a “cover office” in the Minato area of downtown Tokyo, within a U.S. military compound called the Hardy Barracks. From there, NSA maintained close relations with a Japanese surveillance agency that it refers to as Japan’s Directorate for Signals Intelligence, or SIGINT. Beyond Tokyo, NSA has a presence today at several other facilities in Japan. The most important of these is located at a large U.S. airbase in Misawa, about 400 miles north of Tokyo. At what it calls its “Misawa Security Operations Center,” the agency carries out a mission under the code name LADYLOVE. Using about a dozen powerful antennas contained within large golf ball-like white domes, it vacuums up communications — including phone calls, faxes, and internet data — that are transmitted across satellites in the Asia-Pacific region. NSA’s operations in Japan are not limited to monitoring the communications of nearby adversaries. At Misawa, the NSA began integrating hacking operations into its repertoire of capabilities. One such method it deployed at the base is called a “Quantum Insert” attack, which involves monitoring the internet browsing habits of people targeted for surveillance, before covertly redirecting them to a malicious website or server that infects their computers with an “implant.” NSA documents reveal that Yokota is home to what the agency calls its Engineering Support Facility, which supplies equipment used for surveillance operations across the world. In 2004, the agency opened a major new 32,000 square foot building at the site – about half the size of a football field – for the repair and manufacture of surveillance antennas STAKECLAIM. The NSA does not appear to have a large number of employees stationed on the island; instead, it remotely operates the Okinawa facility from a “24-hour collection operations center” in Hawaii. An April 2013 document revealed that the NSA had provided the Japanese Directorate for SIGINT with an installation of XKEYSCORE, a mass surveillance system the NSA describes as its “widest reaching” for sweeping up data from computer networks, monitoring “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet.” And in September 2012, Japan began sharing information with the NSA that could be used to identify particular kinds of malicious software being used by hackers. the NSA had obtained domestic court orders enabling it to conduct surveillance on U.S. territory of Japanese officials and the Bank of Japan The NSA participates in a group called the SIGINT Seniors Pacific, which has included surveillance agencies from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, India, New Zealand, Thailand, South Korea, and Singapore. At the end of proceedings in Anchorage, the moratorium stood and Japan was not granted any special exemptions. Japan’s representatives were furious. “This whaling hypocrisy leads us to seriously question the nature by which Japan will continue participating in this forum,” complained Joji Morishita, Hiroshi Miyashita, a former Japanese government data protection official, told The Intercept that Japan’s funding of U.S. intelligence activities is withheld from public disclosure under a state secrecy law, which he criticized. “It’s our money — Japanese taxpayers’ money,” he said. “We should know how much was spent for intelligence activities in Japan.” “There is no oversight mechanism,” Miyashita said. “There is limited knowledge of activities within the bases.” “Japanese citizens know almost nothing about Japanese government surveillance,” said Daisuke. “It is extremely secret.” At the time, Japan expressed concerns that unintended disclosure of its participation would be too high a risk and had other reasons as well.”