NSA Tracks Cellphones Worldwide

Is no phone sacred anymore? According to documents provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden and interviews the Washington Post conducted with U.S. intelligence officials, the NSA is gathering almost 5 billion records a day on the locations of cellphones worldwide. The information is supposed to allow the agency to track the movements of individuals and map their relationships. Americans’ cellphones are not targeted “by design,” but one anonymous NSA agent said “vast volumes” of data are collected by tapping into the cables that connect cellphone networks around the world and which serve both U.S. phones and foreign ones. On top of that, data is often collected from Americans who travel abroad with their cellphones.