Data on our data: 5 billion location records every day
This month marks the first anniversary of the Edward Snowden leaks that changed our understanding of online privacy. Just like the subject matter of the leaks, the reporting over the last year has offered a deluge of information. So this week, we’re posting a short series about all that data. Every day we’ll bring you another number that reminds us how much we have learned in the last year about online surveillance and the reach of the NSA.
location records every day
According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, The National Security Agency collects nearly 5 billion location records every day from cellphones around the world. That data comes from mobile devices communicating with nearby cell towers, and the NSA uses it to look for patterns of movement that could link people to known terrorists.
Ashkan Soltani, an independent security researcher who has been working with the Washington Post to report on the leaks, calls this a “big data” approach to surveillance. “The majority of those 5 billion records are going to be innocent people’s movements,” Soltani says. “And those are still being collected and analyzed by the NSA, and I think that’s going to be shocking to most people.”
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
