Boundless Informant data collection tool revealed as NSA seeks investigation of media leaks over PRISM reports
Further revelations over PRISM, the US Government’s online global data mining project has been reported by The Guardian US, which has printed images of the system used to track global surveillance data, while investigations into the leaking of the information to the media look set to be investigated by the (National Security Agency) NSA.
The tool, named Boundless Informant, is used to track and map intelligence data being collected by the NSA, with The Guardian reporting that nearly 3 billions pieces of intelligence were collected over a 30 days period end in March earlier this year through computer systems in the US.
97 billion pieces of intelligence data were collected from computer networks around the world in March alone, the newspaper’s US site has also reported.
The US Government is on record as having denied that the NSA was collecting data from its citizens and claimed that it was unable to identify the location or identities of communications - two functions that this tool seems to serve.
On Friday, President Barak Obama made his first comments since the revelations began to appear, stating "If people don't trust Congress and the judiciary then I think we are going to have some problems here," and claiming that a balance between national security and privacy needed to be found.
Also drawn into the controversy have been some of the world’s largest technology brands, Facebook, Yahoo! and Google, all of which deny that the US Government has any access to their servers to spy on their users.
Meanwhile, Reuters has said that the NSA has filed ‘a crimes report’ with the justice department to investigate the leaks to the newspapers, claiming that they have risked national security.