A Washington Post analysis of data provided by Edward Snowden has revealed that nine out of ten communications intercepted by the NSA were from ordinary Internet users, not legally targeted foreigners. But the examination also showed that officials gleaned valuable intelligence from the wide net the agency cast.
The Post says the communications of Americans and non-Americans were intercepted by the National Security Agency, but that 90 percent of the account holders revealed in cached surveillance files "were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else."
According to the newspaper:
"Many of them were Americans. Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents. NSA analysts masked, or "minimized," more than 65,000 such references to protect Americans' privacy, but The Post found nearly 900 additional e-mail addresses, unmasked in the files, that could be strongly linked to U.S. citizens or U.S. residents."