The Washington Post: NSA monitors the displacement of hundreds of millions of mobile phones worldwide

According to an online resource publication The Washington Post , citing secret documents provided by former NSA employee Edward Snowden, and the words of U.S. officials from intelligence agencies, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) monitors every location and movement of hundreds of millions of mobile phones around world.

According to journalists The Washington Post, daily extensive database entered about 5 billion records on the whereabouts of at least hundreds of millions of devices, which in turn allows the secret services with special tools, the existence of which was previously difficult to imagine not only to track the movement of natural persons but also their relationship with each other.

The publication notes that the NSA was originally not intended to track the movement of Americans, and data on tens of millions of U.S. residents who travel abroad each year, appear in the database randomly. Source The Washington Post on the NSA full anonymity, but with the permission of the NSA said that “huge amounts of data” on the whereabouts of mobile phones analysts receive from communications between mobile networks around the world. Thus, U.S. phones abroad are automatically placed into the database as foreign. Analysts also with special instruments, in turn, can track mobile phones anywhere in the world, to monitor their movements and discover hidden relationships between people who use them.

Of course, the NSA reported that these programs that collect information about the whereabouts of individuals do not violate existing laws and are used only for foreign intelligence purposes. For example, to identify potential accomplices of persons who are already under the hood at the NSA. By the way, a program that is used to identify links between certain people during visits to health facilities, meeting rooms in hotels and private homes is called CO-TRAVELER.

“The value of location data is that in the modern world against them virtually impossible to maintain confidentiality,” – said Christopher Soghoian, a leading technologist and senior analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union. – “People who value their privacy, may use the available encryption methods when exchanging emails and mask their actions on the web, but the only way to hide your location – is to abandon modern communication systems and return to life in the cave.”

The Washington Post: NSA monitors the displacement of hundreds of millions of mobile phones worldwide