It became known that the national security Agency of the USA in the past year gathered information about 534 millions of calls and messages. This is almost three times more than in 2016. These data are presented in the annual report of the Office of the Director of national intelligence.
The volume of information collected has increased significantly over the past year, causing serious concerns among human rights activists. The growth occurs on the background of the law passed by the U.S. Congress in 2015, and called, on the contrary, to limit the capabilities of intelligence services to intercept calls and messages. Many lawyers believe that the state exceeds its authority and invades the private lives of ordinary Americans.
At the same time, according to representatives of intelligence services, current principle of the collection of information does not violate the rights of people, as happened under the old system of mass surveillance. We will remind, about it it became known thanks to the ex-employee of the NSA to Edward Snowden, in 2013.
According to the Agency, currently only recorded data on time, location and telephone numberfrom which you realized a call or sent a message. In the old version, the system also recorded information about their content.
Human rights activists disagree with these arguments and say that this trend leads to a significant deterioration of the situation with the rights of American citizens.
In addition, in the report there is evidence that significantly increased the number of foreign citizensresiding outside the United States, and that U.S. intelligence agencies conduct surveillance. In 2016 this figure amounted to 106 thousand people, whereas last year it stood at 129 thousand.
