Report: NSA Collects Billions of Cellphone Records Daily
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pressureUA/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — The National Security Agency has a database that stores nearly five billion cellphone records from around the world on a daily basis, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
It’s the latest fallout from the documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who first exposed the massive spy activities of his one-time employer last spring.
By mining hundreds of millions cellphones worldwide, the Post reports the NSA can “track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable.”
As for the privacy of Americans, the NSA claims it doesn’t track the whereabouts of it citizens although the location data is retrieved “incidentally,” a process the agency says is legal.
The Post also writes that the NSA “has no reason to suspect that the movements of the overwhelming majority of cellphone users would be relevant to national security.”
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