NYTimes | Since 2010, the National Security Agency
has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create
sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can
identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their
traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly
disclosed documents and interviews with officials.
The spy agency began allowing the analysis of phone call and e-mail logs
in November 2010 to examine Americans’ networks of associations for
foreign intelligence purposes after N.S.A. officials lifted restrictions
on the practice, according to documents provided by Edward J. Snowden,
the former N.S.A. contractor.
The policy shift was intended to help the agency “discover and track”
connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the
United States, according to an N.S.A. memorandum from January 2011. The
agency was authorized to conduct “large-scale graph analysis on very
large sets of communications metadata without having to check
foreignness” of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier,
the document said. Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy
of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously
been permitted only for foreigners.
The agency can augment the communications data with material from
public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance
information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration
rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and
unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate
any restrictions on the use of such “enrichment” data, and several
former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it
for both Americans and foreigners.
N.S.A. officials declined to say how many Americans have been caught up
in the effort, including people involved in no wrongdoing. The documents
do not describe what has resulted from the scrutiny, which links phone
numbers and e-mails in a “contact chain” tied directly or indirectly to a
person or organization overseas that is of foreign intelligence
interest.
