Stellar Wind or STELLARWIND is the code name of a Sensitive Compartmented Information security compartment for information collected under the President’s Surveillance Program (PSP). This was a program by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) during the presidency of George W. Bush and revealed by Thomas Tamm to the The New York Times in 2008.
The operation was approved by President George W. Bush shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001. STELLARWIND was succeeded during the presidency of Barack Obama by four major lines of intelligence collection in the territorial United States together capable of spanning the full range of modern telecommunications. The program’s activities involved data mining of a large database of the communications of American citizens, including e-mail communications, phone conversations, financial transactions, and Internet activity.