Take our user survey and make your voice heard.
The National Security Agency is gathering email and instant messenger contact lists from hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens worldwide, many of them Americans, The Washington Post reported late Monday.
The U.S. agency's data collection program harvests the data from address books and "buddy lists", the newspaper said, citing senior intelligence officials and top secret documents provided by the fugitive NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
During a single day last year, the NSA's Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 email address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, the Post said, according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation.
The figures, described as a typical daily intake in the document, correspond to a rate of more than 250 million a year, according to the report, which was published on the newspaper's website.
The NSA declined to confirm the specific allegations in the Post report but defended its surveillance activities as legal and respectful of privacy rights.
The agency has come under fire following revelations about vast efforts to collect data on Americans, but it has mostly acknowledged the accuracy of leaks from Snowden while seeking to play down their significance.
The Snowden affair has not only complicated diplomacy but embarrassed the Internet and telecom sector, with some companies accused of betraying their customers by cooperating with government spying.
Russia has granted Edward Snowden one year's asylum but the United States wants him to be extradited to face espionage charges over his leaking of sensational details of US surveillance programs at home and abroad.
© (C) 2013 AFP
15 Comments
Login to comment
smithinjapan
"The NSA declined to confirm the specific allegations in the Post report but defended its surveillance activities as legal and respectful of privacy rights."
Ummm... yeah... respectful of privacy rights to steal people's private property.
some14some
legal and respectful? in a democratic world? Even one-line explanation will be appreciated by the readers.
Minionion
And we learned from Snowden last month that the NSA shares unfiltered data with Israel, including data of American citizens. Its clear that the purpose of these activities is NOT for security. At least not for the security of the citizens, its probably to increase the governments' security, as they continue to fleece everyone and take away their freedom.
ControlFreak
The plug needs to be pulled on NSA and some other redundant U.S. police agencies. But there are plenty of people out there so scared of everything they actually believe moves like this maintain their security, and plenty of others who think their little gun will protect them from government oppression.
Thunderbird2
That they are abusing American citizens is understandable, but non-Americans? Who do they think they are? What gives American spies the right to snoop on people in other countries? You know, this is one reason why Americans aren't popular around the world - their government sees itself as above international law.
nath
I'm starting to respect Snowden more and more everyday!
7solace9
Other people's privacy is their poverty, and surely they want to get paid. Who manages the spy machine?
Elbuda Mexicano
After 9/11, most people with any common sense in the USA do not care about being POPULAR with Arabs?? Europeans?? Africans?? Venezuelans?? Chinese?? Russians?? Sorry, the popularity game was over a long, long time ago. Time to protect your own country, this is the idea of HOMELAND SECURITY, is it not popular?? Sure, drug dealers, terrorists etc..do not like NSA, CIA etc..to spy on them, we regular folk?? LOVE IT!! Keep on spying and catch all of these bastards! IMHO
Minionion
They long had the right to spy on "these bastards", nobody objects to that. But they have no right to spy on Americans without probable cause; it is against the law. Regular folks do not love it!
It is nonsense to think that those who have nothing to hide do not need rights.
jeff198527
If spying on Americans is so essential, then why couldn't the NSA prevent 9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombing?
bass4funk
They are spies and they have every right to...well....spy that's the nature of the game. Find out what your friends and enemies are doing.
What gives spies from other countries the right to spy snoop on Americans?
You know, this is one reason why Americans aren't popular around the world - their government sees itself as above international law.
And lastly, we don't care (maybe Obama) what anyone else thinks of us, like us or not, this is not a popularity contest. I have the same feeling about the rest of the world.
MarkG
With all this "spying" the red flags were thrown up with the tsanaev brothers and what happened there? Warned to look out for these two and nothing happens. This current spying will do no good to the citizens of the world.
Serrano
How many terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11 2001 have we suffered since then? Zero? I wonder if that has anything to do with intelligence gathering...
davestrousers
How many were there on that scale before 2001? Zero?
Serrano
"How many were there on that scale before 2001? Zero?"
There's a first time for everything. Though it wasn't the first time for the World Trade Center to be attacked with the intention of bringing it down, in 1993 a truck bomb detonated below the North Tower, killing 6 people and injuring a thousand.