Snowden: NSA Lying, Collecting All Communications Into and Out of US

PressTV
July 9, 2013

American whistleblower Edward Snowden says despite U.S. claims that the National Security Agency only monitors foreign communications, all communications that go into and outside the U.S. are collected for analysis.

“The NSA doesn’t limit itself to foreign intelligence; it collects all intelligence that transits the United States,” according to a video released Monday by the Guardian.

Snowden made the remarks during the second part of his interview with Guardian’s Glen Greenwald on June 6 in Hong Kong. The first part was released last month when the British paper published shocking revelations about the NSA surveillance programs for the first time.

The U.S. super spy agency collects massive data on American citizens and other nationalities through their phone call and Internet records, according to the leaked documents.

The U.S. government has supported the spying programs arguing that they have taken measures “to protect national security.”

On Monday, a U.S. court ruled that the administration can no longer refuse to litigate wiretapping cases on the grounds that they would expose secret state intelligence and undermine national security.

The ruling concerns the government working with telecommunication companies like AT&T to illegally collect massive phone data of American residents, as well as making Internet companies hand in their users’ private data through a program called PRISM.

Snowden said U.S. tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo help in the federal data mining programs.

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