06/07/2014 21:43 BBC News - Ordinary internet users 'made up bulk of NSA intercepts'

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6 July 2014 Last updated at 09:02
Ordinary internet users 'made up bulk of NSA intercepts'
COMMENTS (251)
Ninety percent of people identified in a tranche of communications intercepted by the NSA were ordinary internet users,
not foreign surveillance targets, analysis by a US paper says.
The Washington Post says innocents were "caught in a net the National Security Agency had cast for somebody else".
Much of the highly personal information was retained, the paper says, even though it had no intelligence value.
The information was provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The paper said it reviewed some 160,000 emails and instant-messages and 7,900 documents from some 11,000 online accounts,
gathered by the NSA between 2009 and 2012.
The Post said that a four-month investigation it carried out revealed that nine out of 10 of the account holders - including many
Americans - were not the intended surveillance targets.
Much of the information has, the paper says, a "startlingly intimate, even voyeuristic quality" telling stories of "love and heartbreak,
illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes".
However the paper says that the intercepted files also contained "discoveries of considerable intelligence value".
These included "fresh revelations about a secret overseas nuclear project, double-dealing by an ostensible ally, a military calamity
that befell an unfriendly power, and the identities of aggressive intruders into US computer networks", it said.
The Post argues that the surveillance files highlight a policy dilemma for President Obama - while there are some discoveries of
"considerable intelligence value" there is also "collateral harm to privacy on a scale that the administration has not been willing to
address".
Mr Snowden, 30, fled the US in May 2013 and has been living under temporary asylum in Russia.
Last year, he fed a trove of secret NSA documents to news outlets including the Washington Post and the Guardian.
Among other things, the leaks detailed the NSA's practice of harvesting data on millions of telephone calls made in the US and
around the world, and revealed the agency had snooped on foreign leaders.
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06/07/2014 21:43 BBC News - Ordinary internet users 'made up bulk of NSA intercepts'
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251. paul bad
JUST NOW
@238
no one is suggesting they are flocking there in droves,( although seems
that way in Cardiff) they are however a convenient haven for those views
to be conveyed, and hearing those views and the context of those
conversations would be more helpful than peeping into my inbox, this
common sense approach is of course beyond politicians.
250. chrisdunstone
JUST NOW
A CHALLENGE
Some of you claim that if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing
to worry about.
Well... if you really believe that I challenge you to publish all details about
yourself. All emails etc etc. Because after all you have nothing to hide!
Or are you hypocrites?
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06/07/2014 21:43 BBC News - Ordinary internet users 'made up bulk of NSA intercepts'
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Comments 5 of 251 Show More
249. american grizzly
JUST NOW
paul bad are you a racist or a realist?
248. david
JUST NOW
At that rate of scrutiny I reckon there's a 0.00000001% chance that NSA
will pick up my next e-mail. In round figures, I could send 10 e-mails a day
for the next 10000 years before I was spotted.
I won't lose sleep over it.
247. CURTAINS 2012
2 MINUTES AGO
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