The number of “ordinary” internet users who are surveilled by the US Government far outnumber legally targeted foreigners.
According to the Washington Post, and reported by IT News, nine out of ten account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else, according to documents provided by Edward Snowden to the paper.
Leaks showed that nearly half of the files “contained names, email addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to US citizens or residents,” while many other files were about intimate issues such as love, illicit sexual relations, political and religious conversions and financial anxieties. Is it really surprising that people are getting caught up in the net of surveillance, or is it more concerning that we do now know what is happening with those details?
