Millions of Americans, non-Americans have been swept up in this digital dragnet.
According to a new report from the Washington Post, the National Security Agency is
This new revelation, not surprisingly, comes from the top secret documents entrusted to the Post and other media outlets by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. This new unnamed program, which the Post says “has not been disclosed before,
The paper added:
Based on the Post’s reporting, which includes a byline from independent security researcher Ashkan Soltani, the program appears to be related to X-Keyscore, which snags nearly all short-term unencrypted traffic from various points around the globe. As Ars previously described, it would be nearly impossible for the NSA to store all that data for an extended period of time. One slide published in June 2013 says that for a single 30-day period in 2012, this amounted to “at least 41 billion total records.”
According to an unnamed intelligence official, the Post noted that “because of the method employed, the agency is not legally required or technically able to restrict its intake to contact lists belonging to specified foreign intelligence targets,” adding that “when information passes through 'the overseas collection apparatus... the assumption is you’re not a US person.'" A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also told the Post that the agency is focused on "terrorists, human traffickers, and drug smugglers," not the contacts of ordinary Americans.