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The Obama government has come all out in defense of NSA and its extensive surveillance programs. The government has, in recent days, refused to tolerate absolutely any criticism of the agency. After the recent defense of NSA by President Obama, the agency has claimed that it’s surveillance web ‘touches’ only 1.6% of the internet traffic.

The revelation has been made by the agency in order to show how minisicule the scope of its surveillance is, compared to the overall size of the web. However, NSA falls short of stating how even 1.6% of the internet traffic means millions upon millions of users, hinting at the huge scope of NSA’s operations.

This recent gem from the agency was cited in ‘The National Security Agency: Missions, Authorities, Oversight and Partnerships’, a document recently dished out.

The agency notes in this document, ‘According to figures published by a major tech provider, the Internet carries 1,826 Petabytes of information per day. In its foreign intelligence mission, NSA touches about 1.6% of that. However, of the 1.6% of the data, only 0.025% is actually selected for review. The net effect is that NSA analysts look at 0.00004% of the world’s traffic in conducting their mission — that’s less than one part in a million. Put another way, if a standard basketball court represented the global communications environment, NSA’s total collection would be represented by an area smaller than a dime on that basketball court.’

The agency has further stated, in so many words, that it doesn’t do anything illegal at all, domestically or overseas and that all its partnership with foreign intelligence partners is perfectly legal. Naturally, such claims are too hard to believe, something which is further compounded by the fact that the aforementioned and quote document hasn’t been signed by anyone within NSA.

Source: NSA: Missions, Authorities

Courtesy: CNET

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