By Mark Tarallo
Ordinary Internet users far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post. Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else. Many of them were Americans. Nearly half of the surveillance files contained names, e-mail addresses, or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents. NSA analysts masked, or “minimized,” more than 65,000 such references to protect Americans’ privacy, but The Postfound nearly 900 additional e-mail addresses, unmasked in the files, that could be linked to U.S. citizens or residents. Among the most valuable contents—whichThe Post did not describe in close detail, to avoid interfering with ongoing operations —are fresh revelations about a secret overseas nuclear project, double-dealing by an ostensible ally, a military calamity that befell an unfriendly power, and the identities of aggressive intruders into U.S. computer networks, according to the newspaper.
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