NSA uses metadata to plot complex graphs of US citizens’ social connections for foreign intelligence
© Collage: «Voice of Russia»
The US National Security Agency has been exploiting US citizens' personal information drawn from its large collection of metadata to create complex graphs of social connections for foreign intelligence purposes, the latest Snowden leaks have revealed.
Documents
obtained by the New York Times from the former NSA contractor Edward
Snowden say that the practice has been going on since November 2010,
after restrictions prohibiting the agency from working with US citizens’
data were “lifted” by NSA officials.
The
NSA was then authorized to conduct “large-scale graph analysis on very
large sets of communications metadata without having to check
foreignness” of the e-mail addresses, phone numbers or any other
identifiers, the documents reportedly said.
The
policy shift was intended to help the agency “discover and track”
connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the US, a
January 2011 NSA memorandum, cited in the documents, explained.
According
to the report, the agency has been allowed to “enrich” their
communications data with materials obtained from public, commercial and
other sources while preparing the graphs. Such sources reportedly
include Facebook profiles, bank codes, insurance information, passenger
manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as
well as property records and unspecified tax data.
The
sophisticated graphs provide agents with direct and indirect “contact
chains” between an unspecified number of Americans and people or
organizations overseas that are of foreign intelligence interest, the
report says.
Not
only do they identify a list of possible associates but also note their
locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other
personal information, it adds.
The
documents provided no information on the results of the NSA
surveillance. According to the NYT, the agency’s officials declined to
say how many Americans have been caught up in the effort.
The
NSA has denied it abuses its practice of vast data collection, which
includes the private information of US citizens, with the agency’s
spokeswoman saying that “all of the NSA’s work has a foreign
intelligence purpose” and that “all data queries must include a foreign
intelligence justification”.
In
justifying the warrantless analysis of metadata on US soil, the
spokeswoman referred to a 1979 Supreme Court ruling saying that
Americans could have no expectation of privacy concerning what telephone
numbers they called.
When
asked whether the NSA collects Americans’ locations based on cell phone
signals data, the agency’s director Keith B. Alexander told a Senate
Intelligence Committee on Thursday that the agency was not doing so
under the Patriot Act but added that a fuller response would be
classified.
While
the agents are said to be allowed to analyze the metadata but not the
contents of the calls or e-mails, experts argue that this information
alone is enough to produce a portrait of a person based on his contacts,
as well as to pick up some sensitive details of an individuals's
private life.
“Metadata
can be very revealing. Knowing things like the number someone just
dialed or the location of the person’s cellphone is going to allow to
assemble a picture of what someone is up to. It’s the digital equivalent
of tailing a suspect,” Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George
Washington University, told the NYT.
The
leaked documents, which are said to provide a rare window into what the
NSA actually does with the information it gathers, and how it unlocks
“as many secrets about individuals as possible,” are the latest
revelations obtained via former CIA employee and NSA contractor, Edward
Snowden.
In
the U.S., Snowden is wanted on espionage charges for leaking classified
documents that focused on massive electronic surveillance by the US
government and its foreign allies which collaborated with the NSA.
Snowden
was granted temporary asylum in Russia on August 1 after being stuck in
the transit zone at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for more than a
month. He is now staying in an undisclosed location, with reports that
he has done a little travel and already speaks some Russian.
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