NSA aims "to create a database of every call ever made" in US
reuters: ... The existence of an NSA eavesdropping program launched after the Sept. 11 attacks was revealed in December.
Defending the controversial program, U.S. President George W. Bush and his administration officials have said it aims to uncover links between international terrorists and their domestic collaborators and only targets communications between a person inside the United States and a person overseas.
But USA Today said that calls originating and terminating within the United States have not escaped the NSA's attention.
"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," the paper quoted one source as saying. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within U.S. borders, it said the source added.
The NSA has "access to records of billions of domestic calls," USA Today said. Although customers' names and addresses are not being handed over, "the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information," it said.
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Defending the controversial program, U.S. President George W. Bush and his administration officials have said it aims to uncover links between international terrorists and their domestic collaborators and only targets communications between a person inside the United States and a person overseas.
But USA Today said that calls originating and terminating within the United States have not escaped the NSA's attention.
"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," the paper quoted one source as saying. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within U.S. borders, it said the source added.
The NSA has "access to records of billions of domestic calls," USA Today said. Although customers' names and addresses are not being handed over, "the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information," it said.
Read more
posted by exoplanet at 3:42 PM
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