Report: Social connections of U.S. citizens collected by NSA
The National Security Agency has been gathering the social connections of Americans since 2010, according to a New York Times report Saturday.

By allowing the analysis of every email and phone number for foreign intelligence purposes since 2010, James Risen and Berlin-based freelancer Laura Poitras report, the NSA has been able to create sophisticated graphs about people’s social connections on a massive scale.

Checking for a target’s “foreignness” was also not a requirement, and the agency would not say how many Americans were caught up in the effort....