Former NSA chief declares Gmail as preferred service of terrorists

Former NSA and CIA director has reportedly said that terrorists prefer using Google's Gmail service for communication.

Michael Hayden, while defending the alleged snooping programmes sanctioned by the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA), said that Gmail is used by terrorists worldwide, presumably referring to the online service rather than the actual provider of Internet service.

According to the Washington Post, Hayden suggested that the origins of Internet in the US partially justifies the NSA's conduct as much of the web traffic goes through American servers and the government takes a picture of it for intelligence purposes.

The US government's surveillance programmes have been severely criticized after whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the methods and the extent to which the alleged snooping is carried on citizens.

The government is known to be intercepting citizens' web and phone data and the tech giants, including Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, etc. have been continuously pushing the government to allow them releasing NSA data requests publicly.

The report added Hayden saying that US could be fairly charged with the militarization of the World Wide Web as the NSA's Tactical Access Operations (TAO) is charged with hacking foreign targets to steal data and monitor communications.