According to a document by Edward Snowden published by the Washington Post, the US secret service collects 250 million lists per year.
Up to 250 million contact lists are collected annually by the NSA, reveals a Washington Post publication. The article is based on a document delivered to the newspaper by Edward Snowden, according to which the American secret service «spies» users from the most popular e‑mail and instant messaging services, aiming to search for possible connections of individuals it deems suspicious.
Snowden delivered to the newspaper an internal presentation of the NSA, which reveals that, within just one day of 2012, the secret service collected the lists from 444,743 accounts on Yahoo, 105,068 on Hotmail, 82,857 on Facebook and 33,697 on Gmail. It also gathered another 22,881 lists from «unidentified» sources.
The NSA intercepts the relevant data as it is transmitted over the web, which happens when the user accesses the service they are registered with, to write an e-mail or a message. And this is because services want to make it easier for their members, automatically filling in the sender as soon as they start typing their name. Another reason is that, in this way, the online synchronization of computers and «smart» devices occurs.
Following earlier Snowden revelations, the secret service has claimed that its goal is to combat terrorism and drug trafficking, adding that it studies the «networks» of relationships of potential suspects and not the personal information of ordinary citizens.
Indeed, the interest in the interception of lists, as the presentation reveals, is that they are carried out outside the US, so that they are not illegal under American law. For’ this purpose, the NSA cooperates with foreign telecommunications providers or foreign intelligence services. However, due to the structure of Internet communications, the data collected also includes contact lists from American users.
Because the collection of the catalogs is done «on the move», and not directly from the servers where they are stored, the Washington Post reports that the secret service does not need to request the cooperation of the services, making the eavesdropping in their ignorance perfectly.
Commenting on the post, representatives of Google, Facebook and Microsoft claimed complete ignorance about the issue, adding that they do not cooperate with the NSA. The same was said by Suzanne Philion from Yahoo, noting that starting next January the company will begin encrypting its users' communications, which is the only thing it does not do today.
Source: portal.kathimerini.gr
