New report that the NSA collects data from 5 billion phones every day

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that The National Security Agency tracks the location of about 5 billion cellphones every day, on top of accessing information from some of those devices. Intelligence officials and documents released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that data collected from the devices is stored and can be used to retrace their locations. However, the NSA says that it does not intentionally try to access the location of citizens’ cellphones.

A senior collection manager spoke anonymously about the system, which accesses mobile networks all over the world and therefore collects “vast volumes” of location information. However, this also brings to light the fact that Americans traveling abroad often have their phones accessed by the NSA.

General counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Robert Litt, echoed previous statements by the NSA, saying that location information is only collected to aid in the hunt for potential foreign threats. “There is no element of the intelligence community that under any authority is intentionally collecting bulk cellphone location information about cellphones in the United States,” Litt said.