LONDON – The US National Security Agency has collected almost 200 million mobile phone text messages a day from around the world, a report said Wednesday, in the latest revelations from the Edward Snowden files.
The Guardian newspaper and Britain’s Channel 4 News reported that the NSA used the messages to extract data on the location, contact networks and credit card details of mobile users.
British spies were given access by the NSA to search the collected “metadata” — information about the text messages but not the actual contents — of British citizens, according to the report.
The secret files say the programme, codenamed Dishfire, collects “pretty much everything it can”, the Guardian and Channel 4 News reported.
Dishfire works by collecting and analysing automated text messages such as missed call alerts or texts sent to inform users about international roaming charges, the news organisations said.
It was also able to work out phone users’ credit card numbers using texts from banks.
They cited an internal NSA presentation from 2011 on the programme and papers from Britain’s electronic eavesdropping facility GCHQ.
There was no immediate reaction from the NSA.
GCHQ said it worked within British law.
“All of GCHQ’s work is carried out in accordance with the strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate and that there is rigorous oversight,” it said in a statement.
The report comes a day before US President Barack Obama is due to give a long-awaited speech proposing curbs on NSA phone and Internet data dragnets exposed by fugitive intelligence contractor Snowden.
Snowden remains in exile in Russia, where he has been granted temporary asylum.
Tweet
© AFP 2013Previous Columns by AFP:NSA Scoops Up Millions of Text Messages a Day: ReportFinally, Snowden Gets His Answer from ObamaNSA Taps Offline Computers Using Radio Waves: ReportChinas Huawei Denies US Spies Compromised its Equipment US-German Talks on No-spy Deal Going Nowhere: Media
sponsored links
Tags: NEWS INDUSTRY
Tracking Law Enforcement
