If you think the NSA isn’t reading your text messages, you
are sadly mistaken. Based on top secret data leaked by Edward Snowden,
the NSA collects 200 million text messages a day from across the globe,
using them to extract data including location, contact networks,
passwords and credit card details, etc. (Full document here.)
The NSA program, codenamed Dishfire, collects “pretty much
everything it can”, according to documents from the UK spy agency GCHQ,
rather than merely storing the communications of existing surveillance
targets.
The NSA has tapped its vast text database to get info in
people’s travel plans, contact lists, financial transactions and more —
including people under no suspicion of illegal activity.
On average, each day the NSA was able to extract:
• More than 5 million missed-call alerts, for use in
contact-chaining analysis (working out someone’s social network from who
they contact and when)
• Details of 1.6 million border crossings a day, from network roaming alerts
• More than 110,000 names, from electronic business cards, which also included the ability to extract and save images.
• Over 800,000 financial transactions, either through text-to-text payments or linking credit cards to phone users.
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