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NSA Scraping Buddy Lists and Address Books From Live Internet Traffic
Charliemopps writes that the Washington Post reports "The NSA is collecting hundreds of millions of contact lists from all over the world, many of them belonging to Americans. The intercept them from instant messaging services as they move across global data links. The NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world's e-mail and instant messaging accounts."
According to the leaked document (original as a PDF), the NSA is intercepting some chat protocols and at least IMAP, and then analyzing the data for buddy list information and inbox contents.
The article explicitly says this does not appear to be based on the co-operation of US providers but rather international fibre taps - presumably placed or operated by compliant intelligence agencies that are merely extensions of the NSA. The US might be a ringleader in this activity, but other countries have out of control security services as well. After a long period of political silence in the UK we finally got some discussion this week, after senior cabinet members who served on the national security committees admitted they had no clue anything like that was happening. Cameron's response was priceless, he said the agencies would have told them about it if they'd asked!
For people who aren't aware:
"I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no."
http://www.nbcumv.com/mediavillage/networks/nbcnews/pressreleases?pr=contents/press-releases/2013/06/09/nbcnewsexclusiv1370799482417.xml