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12 months onwards from the first Snowden revelations

5 June marks 12 months since the Snowden revelations burst on the world scene.     And all the sort of things we have come to learn, much of it appalling and a blot on various agencies around the world, notably the USA's NSA.

 "This last year, we have learned that the NSA has strayed far from its legitimate goal of protecting national security. In fact, we have seen the NSA participate in economic espionage, diplomatic spying and suspicionless surveillance of entire populations. Even worse, the NSA has also surreptitiously weakened the products and standards that Internet users use to protect themselves against online spying.

In his new book about working with Snowden, No Place To Hide, journalist Glenn Greenwald lays out some alarming facts that have been revealed in the year of leaks:
  • In a 30 day period, the NSA collected almost 3 billion telephone calls and emails that had passed directly through US telecom networks. As Greenwald explained, that exceeds the collection of each of the systems from “Russia, Mexico, and virtually all countries in Europe, and roughly equal to the collection of data from China.”
  • In a 30 day period, a single NSA unit had collected data on more than 97 billion emails and 124 billion phone calls from around the world.
  • In a single 30 day period, the NSA has collected 500 million pieces of data from Germany, 2.3 billion from Brazil, and 13.5 billion from India.
  • The NSA has collected 70 million pieces of metadata in cooperation with France, 60 million with Spain, 47 million with Italy, 1.8 million with the Netherlands, 33 million with Norway, and 23 million with Denmark."

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