LONDON: The National Security Agency is reportedly collecting almost 5 billion cell phone records a day under a programme that monitors and analyses highly personal data about the precise whereabouts of individuals, wherever they travel in the world.
Details of the giant database of location-tracking information, and the sophisticated ways in which the NSA uses the data to establish relationships between people, have been revealed by the Washington Post, which cited documents supplied by whistleblower Edward Snowden and intelligence officials.
The spy agency is said to be tracking the movements of “at least hundreds of millions of devices” in what amounts to a staggeringly powerful surveillance tool. It means the NSA can, through mobile phones, track individuals anywhere they travel — including into private homes — or retrace previously travelled journeys. The data can also be used to study patterns of behaviour to reveal personal information and relationships between different users.
The NSA provided some input into the report, with one senior collection manager, granted permission to speak to the newspaper, admitting the agency is “getting vast volumes” of location data from around the planet by tapping into cables that connect mobile networks globally.
Civil liberties experts have long said that cell phone location data contains some of the most intrusive information about people in the digital age, leaving a kaleidoscopic footprint of a person’s life. Phones transmit location data whenever a phone is turned on, irrespective of whether they are being used to make calls or send text messages and emails.
According to the Post, the NSA is applying sophisticated mathematical techniques to map cellphone owners’ relationships, overlapping their patterns of movement with thousands or millions of other users who cross their paths. These tools — known collectively as Co-Traveler — enable the NSA to search for possible associates of intelligence targets. According to briefing slides cited in the report, the NSA draws location data from 10 so-called “sigads,” or signals intelligence activity designators, around the world, which in turn rely on data provided by corporate partners.
Defending the programme, US officials told the Post that efforts to collect and analyse location data are lawful and intended strictly to develop intelligence about foreign targets, with information about the location of domestic cell phones only gathered “incidentally”.
Robert Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said: “There is no element of the intelligence community that under any authority is intentionally collecting bulk cell phone location information about cell phones in the United States.” However, data is also gathered from the tens of millions of Americans who travel abroad with their cell phones every year, the Post reported.
“As with other surveillance activities, the NSA claims that its cell phone location programme is targeted at foreigners, and Americans’ information is collected only ‘incidentally,’” said Elizabeth Goitein, a co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Programme. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Guardian
