James Ball:

> The National Security Agency has collected almost 200 million text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top-secret documents.

So what, right?

> On average, each day the NSA was able to extract:

> • More than 5 million missed-call alerts, for use in contact-chaining analysis (working out someone’s social network from who they contact and when)

> • Details of 1.6 million border crossings a day, from network roaming alerts

> • More than 110,000 names, from electronic business cards, which also included the ability to extract and save images.

> • Over 800,000 financial transactions, either through text-to-text payments or linking credit cards to phone users

> The agency was also able to extract geolocation data from more than 76,000 text messages a day, including from “requests by people for route info” and “setting up meetings”. Other travel information was obtained from itinerary texts sent by travel companies, even including cancellations and delays to travel plans.

No big deal though…