A report in a major U.S. newspaper says when the National Security Agency intercepted the online accounts of legally targeted foreigners over a four-year period, the agency also collected the conversations of nine times as many ordinary Internet users, both Americans and non-Americans.
The Washington Post, in a story posted on its website late Saturday, says nearly half of the surveillance files contained names, email addresses or other details the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents.
The huge trove of intercepted documents was provided to the Post by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden, who fled the United States and is now living in Russia.
The newspaper says there were "discoveries of considerable intelligence value" in the intercepted messages, including revelations about a secret overseas nuclear project, double-dealing by "an ostensible ally," an unfriendly power's military calamity, and the identities of aggressive intruders into U.S. computer networks.
Officials in Washington have made no immediate comment about the report.