US spy agency collecting millions of contact lists across the globe

WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency (NSA) has been sifting through millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world—including those of Americans—in its effort to find possible links to terrorism or other criminal activity, according to a published report.

The Washington Post reported on late Monday that the spy agency intercepted hundreds of thousands of e-mail address books every day from private accounts on Yahoo!, Gmail, Facebook and Hotmail that move through global data links. The NSA also collected about a half million buddy lists from live chat services and e-mail accounts.

The Post said it learned about the collection tactics from secret documents provided byNSAleaker Edward Snowden and confirmed by senior intelligence officials. It was the latest revelation of the spy agency’s practices to be disclosed by Snowden, the former NSA systems analyst who fled the United States and now resides in Russia.

The newspaper said the NSA analyzed the contacts to map relationships and connections among various foreign intelligence targets. During a typical day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch collected more than 440,000 e-mail address books, the Post said. That would correspond to a rate of more than 250million a year.

A spokesperson for the national intelligence director’s office, which oversees the NSA, told the Post that the agency was seeking intelligence on valid targets and was not interested in personal information from ordinary Americans.

Spokesperson Shawn Turner said the NSA was guided by rules that required the agency to “minimize the acquisition, use and dissemination” of information that identifies US citizens or permanent residents.

While the collection was taking place overseas, the Post said it encompassed the contact lists of many American users. The spy agency obtains the contact lists through secret arrangements with foreign telecommunications companies or other services that control Middle East’s only nuclear armed state—warned against any “partial agreement.”

“Iran believes it can get by with cosmetic concessions that would not significantly impede its path to developing nuclear weapons, concessions that could be reversed in weeks,” said Israel’s security Cabinet.

Kerry underlined on Sunday that Washington meant what it said when it insisted it would never allow room for a nucleararmed Iran.

“I believe firmly that no deal is better than a bad deal,” he said. Internet traffic, the Post reported.

Earlier this year, Snowden gave documents to the Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper disclosing US surveillance programs that collect vast amounts of phone records and online data in the name of foreign intelligence, often sweeping up information on American citizens.

The collection of contact lists in bulkwould be illegal if done in the United States, but the Post said the agency could get around that restriction by intercepting lists from access points around theworld.

The newspaper quoted a senior intelligence official as saying NSA analysts may not search or distribute information from the contacts database unless they could “make the case that something in there is a valid foreign intelligence target in and of itself.”

Commenting on the Post story, Alex Abdo, a staff attorney with theAmericanCivil Liberties Union, said in an e-mailed statement: “This revelation further confirms that the NSA has relied on the pretense of ‘foreign intelligence gathering’ to sweep up an extraordinary amount of information about everyday Americans. The NSA’s indiscriminate collection of information about innocent people can’t be justified on security grounds, and it presents a serious threat to civil liberties.”