The NSA is using data-mining to create graphs on American citizens

  We have been told time and time again that the NSA was not spying on Americans  We have been told that the NSA was simply data-mining, collecting metadata, looking for patterns while the actual contents of our phone calls and emails remain private.

  But now we learn, if this article is correct, that the NSA is doing much more than simply looking for patterns, they are actually using social networks to create graphs which can be much more intrusive than the agency has let on.

Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information

  This policy began in 2010 when the NSA lifted prior restrictions on this practice. Before this policy change the NSA could only conduct this type of activity on foreigners but that is no longer the case:

The spy agency began allowing the analysis of phone call and e-mail logs in November 2010 to examine Americans’ networks of associations for foreign intelligence purposes after N.S.A. officials lifted restrictions on the practice, according to documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.

The policy shift was intended to help the agency “discover and track” connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the United States, according to an N.S.A. memorandum from January 2011. The agency was authorized to conduct “large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness” of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier, the document said.

  Did you catch that last sentence? The NSA can collect and use this data without even having to check the “foreignness”  of the communications! And that is precisely what they are doing; they can see who you are talking to, where you are, and who you are travelling with and we are supposed to believe that Big Brother is not watching? 

  Make no mistake about it; Big Brother is watching and he is not happy.