The Washington Post revealed that the papers Snowden provided show that the agency has the ability to track the movements of individuals, and their relationships to others through their phone data.
The NSA uses this data to gather intelligence on
targets and their whereabouts in what is in essence a mass surveillance
programme, the paper said.
An official at the NSA confirmed to the paper
that the processes were in place and that it gathered “vast volumes” of
data from the project. It does so by tapping into cables that serve
mobile phone networks around the world, and in the US.
The revelations have drawn sharp criticism from
some, with Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the American Civil
Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Speech, Privacy and Technology Project
criticising the government for its covert operations.
“It is staggering that a location-tracking
program on this scale could be implemented without any public debate,
particularly given the substantial number of Americans having their
movements recorded by the government,” she said.
“The dragnet surveillance of hundreds of
millions of cell phones flouts our international obligation to respect
the privacy of foreigners and Americans alike. The government should be
targeting its surveillance at those suspected of wrongdoing, not
assembling massive associational databases that by their very nature
record the movements of a huge number of innocent people.”
The revelations are the latest in a long line of
insights into the closed world of government spying since Snowden
leaked reams of documents and fled to Hong Kong, and then onto Russia.
Microsoft is one tech giant that has promised to boost encryption as a result of the PRISM scandal and other programmes that have come to light, such as the UK's Tempora. Others such as Yahoo and Twitter are also improving their security practices.
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