The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has tracked transferors and recipients of bitcoins all over the world. This was reported by the Intercept on documents revealed by former NSA employee Edward Snowden.
The documents expose NSA collecting global Internet traffic by software program that pretends to provide anonymity to users. NSA intended to observe different cryptocurrencies, but bitcoin has been its main goal.
The surveillance has been conducted through the OAKSTAR program. MONKEYROCKET, a sub-program of OAKSTAR, has played a key role in identifying bitcoin users and monitoring their activity. Instead of hiding user data, the sub-program gathered data from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and South America and sent them straight to the NSA.
According to Edward Snowden, today, specialists of the agency can easily identify any bitcoin transaction participants.