The National Security Agency has the ability to collect around one billion mobile phone calls daily, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald disclosed on Friday.
Speaking via Skype to attendants at the Socialism 2013 convention in Chicago, Greenwald said the NSA has access to new technology that allows the agency to “redirect into its own repositories one billion cell phone calls every single day.”
Greenwald said the document that revealed the technology hadn’t yet been published by the newspaper but was forthcoming.
One June 6th, Greenwald publish a story that revealed a secret document ordering Verizon to turn over millions of pieces of metadata related to incoming and outgoing phone calls.
Separately, the Washington Post published a story that revealed a large domestic surveillance program called PRISM that reportedly allows authorities direct access into the servers of nine U.S.-based technology companies, including Google, Facebook and Aol.
Both reports, and several others that followed, were based on classified documents given to Greenwald at the Guardian and journalists at the Post handed over by Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former employee of government contractor Booz Allen. Snowden is believed to be holed up at an airport in Moscow after hiding in Hong Kong since last month.
