The National Security Agency tracks the locations of cellphones worldwide, according to documents leaked to the Washington Post by former NSA contracter Edward Snowden.
The NSA collects 5 million records a day in order to track the movements of individuals, according to documents and intelligence officials interviewed by the Washington Post. The agency taps into cables that connect cellphone networks globally.
The NSA does not purposefully target American devices, but collects data on Americans’ locations “incidentially,” according to the Post.
Robert Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told the Post that the NSA is not purposefully collecting bulk data on U.S. cellphone locations.
“There is no element of the intelligence community that under any authority is intentionally collecting bulk cellphone location information about cellphones in the United States,” he said.
