![\"109346-cyber-attack-identity-theft-hackers\"](\"http:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/109346-cyber-attack-identity-theft-hackers.jpg\")
\nHopefully, the NSA has an \u00fcber good spam filter.<\/p>\n
\nHopefully, the NSA has an \u00fcber good spam filter.<\/p>\n
The profile of the super-secret spy agency has been anything but secret of late, thanks to the activities of former CIA employee and NSA contractor turned privacy activist Edward Snowden<\/a>. Like Julian Assange<\/a> and Chelsea Elizabeth (formerly Bradley) Manning<\/a> before him, Snowden\u2019s put a bulls eye on his forehead by using a sharp stick to poke the U.S. intelligence community and bring to the light of day secrets that weren\u2019t meant for public consumption. And in the matter of the NSA, the fallout\u2019s still pouring down on the practices of the agency, which has been collecting data wherever it can, and that means Internet and phone communication to the tune of over a billion people worldwide.<\/p>\n And that includes email.<\/p>\n So it shouldn\u2019t be a surprise to anyone that, perhaps, the NSA\u2019s been inundated with spam. An interesting article on ZDNet by David Gewirtz<\/a> discusses just that, and if you stop to think about it, you might just have a V-8 moment and slap your head when you realize that the very real social disease known as spam isn\u2019t just for public consumption.<\/p>\n Gewirtz cites an article from The Washington Post<\/a>, which details some of the information that the NSA\u2019s gathering, and the numbers are somewhat staggering. \u201cRather than targeting individual users, the NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world\u2019s e-mail and instant messaging accounts. Analysis of that data enables the agency to search for hidden connections and to map relationships within a much smaller universe of foreign intelligence targets.\u201d And that makes sense, because when you consider group discussions with lots of CCs and BCCs, you can draw all sorts of associations between people and determine their social networks.<\/p>\n Over a single day last year, TWP reports, \u201cthe NSA\u2019s Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation<\/a>. Those figures, described as a typical daily intake in the document, correspond to a rate of more than 250\u2009million a year.\u201d Wow. That\u2019s the type of information that would make spammers salivate with the potential opportunities<\/a>.<\/p>\n TWP reports that each day, \u201cthe NSA collects contacts from an estimated 500,000 buddy lists on live-chat services as well as from the inbox displays of Web-based e-mail accounts. The collection depends on secret arrangements with foreign telecommunications companies or allied intelligence services in control of facilities that direct traffic along the Internet\u2019s main data routes.\u201d<\/p>\n