Your online address books are probably being accessed by the government. But you probably kinda knew that anyway.
The NSA collects hundreds of millions of address books and contact lists from emails and instant messaging accounts, the Washington Post reported late Monday, drawing once again from documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
According to the report, the NSA actively collects and stores "buddy lists" and online address books from "most major webmail" systems and has been since at least January 2012. The Agency uses these virtual reams of "metadata-rich" info to create searchable recreations of an individual's life based on their online connections.
The newly unveiled program expands on the NSA's reach even beyond the already expansive PRISM and Xkeyscore programs, which gave the government the ability to access nearly all digital communications.
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