Facebook profiles and emails make you NSA 'surveillance target'

Snowden said NSA aims to store all the 'metadata' permanently

A recently released email interview of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden throws light on how a user's profile on social media site Facebook and the email content can potentially land the individual in the NSA surveillance net.

According to Stuff.co.nz, Snowden said that one could be targeted for surveillance based on their Facebook profile and email content.

He revealed that an analyst gets a daily or scheduled summary report on what changed on the target's system, 'packet capture' of leftover data that wasn't understood by the automated dissectors and then it is entirely up to the analysts to do what they want as the target's system is now owned by the US government.

Snowden further revealed that NSA aims at storing all the 'metadata' permanently, as all the content isn't as valuable as metadata, which refers to the phone records, because one can re-fetch content but metadata tells what out of the target's data stream one actually wants.

According to the report, NSA isn't the only surveillance authority as the 'Five Eyes' namely UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada 'go beyond what NSA itself does'.

UK GCHQ's surveillance programme called 'Tempora' snarfs everything, in a rolling buffer to allow retroactive investigation without missing a single bit.

Snowden said that if a user sends a single data packet to or from Britain it routes through the UK and the surveillance agencies get it, if one downloads something and the Content Delivery Network happens to serve from the UK, it is tracked, even if one's sick daughter's medical records get processed at a London call center, they are not spared either.

The report added Snowden saying that if a user has a choice at all, then one should never route through or peer with the UK under any circumstances as their fibres are radioactive and trap everything.