News

Great. NSA Internet Spying Is More Widespread

by Gillian White

New details emerging Wednesday have managed to make the National Security Agency's spying practices sound even more creepy and invasive.

Apparently, the NSA has a system that can parse through 75 percent of all U.S. internet traffic in order to hunt for foreign intelligence. The system can also check in on domestic phone calls made via the internet, and hold on to emails sent between citizens.

That's much more spy power than the NSA originally reported having.

The system is supposed to be tracking calls that originate in and end outside of the U.S., or foreign calls that happen to pass through. But like other NSA methods that the public has recently been clued in on, the technology is not perfect. That means that occasionally, communications between two U.S. citizens get snagged, read, listened to, and recorded or kept in the Agency's data collection banks.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the filtering of these communications happens at major internet cross points all around the country, not just near points where undersea or foreign cables hit the U.S. (as was previously thought).

The NSA of course denies that they are using the technology to listen in on a large portion of America's mundane conversations. But details of a more widespread spying effort comes on the heels of what appears to be a push to crack down on the leaking of intelligence agency tactics via the media.

In an interview on CNN, journalist Glenn Greenwald said that charges a lawsuit will be filed on behalf of his partner David Miranda, who was detained at a London Airport and reportedly questioned about his involvement with the leaking of information on the NSA.

The lawsuit will attempt to prove that British authorities acted beyond the limits of the law, which was intended as a tool to question potential terror organization affiliates. It will also seek the return of several confiscated electronic devices, including a laptop, cell phone, and USB memory sticks containing information pertaining to the continuing investigation into intelligence agency tactics.