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So it's not just Verizon, then. Surprise. It's all a little dizzying. It's enough to make a privacy advocate's head explode. And it makes the revelation that the Obama administration had swiped two months of phone records from the Associated Press seem downright quaint. I mean, this is hundreds of millions of Americans we're talking about. To clarify, here's a handy list of everyone the NSA has essentially been spying on in the United States of America:NBC News has learned that under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, the government has been collecting records on every phone call made in the U.S.
— NBC Nightly News (@nbcnightlynews) June 6, 2013
- Every person who has dialed, texted, or otherwise used a cell phone or land line over the last seven years. Your metadata is stored somewhere in NSA's servers, where the government has access to every communication you have completed since 2007.
- Anyone who maintains a Facebook profile, Gmail account, or Yahoo! account.
- Anyone who has communicated on Skype or a Google Hangout at any point over the last six years.
- Anyone who has entered a search query on Google or Bing.
- Anyone who has had an online conversation on Gchat or Facebook.
- Perhaps, even, anyone who has charged something to their credit card—the details are murkier here, but the Wall Street Journal reports that the NSA has a PRISM-like deal with credit card companies to hand over data about what you're buying.
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