NSA pulling out less snoop-data than believed: Reports

The US spy agency is pulling out less phone snoop-data than popularly believed, unnamed US officials have reportedly claimed in two reports.

The two reports, published in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, have revealed the officials claiming that the National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting less than 30 percent of all Americans' call records because of an inability to keep pace with the explosion in cell phone use.

According to Cnet, the report in the Post has claimed that NSA's warrantless phone snoop-data collection was less in last summer as it dropped to data on about one-third of all calls.

The reason for the drop in collection of data was due to technical problems faced in stripping out location data from cell phone calls, which the agency is not allowed to collect.

The reports have claimed that the government is taking steps to restore the collection, back to its previous levels and the NSA is preparing to seek court orders to compel wireless companies that currently do not hand over records to the government to do so.

Despite the drop in collection of metadata, the alleged mass surveillance programme has still swept up 'tens of billions of records going back five years,' the report added.