Latest Snowden leaks suggest NSA stored UK phone & email records
The latest batch of revelations to emanate from former CIA employee Edward Snowden suggests that the UK consented to the NSA retaining mobile phone numbers and email addresses of Britons not suspected of any criminal activity.
Both Channel 4 News and the Guardian assert that, since 2007, ordinary members of the public whose details were caught up in trawls for information were saved from that point on rather than being destroyed.
The rule change was instigated, allegedly, to allow further analysis for the purpose of ‘contact chaining’ - or seeking connections between different numbers and addresses.
There is no suggestion that the content of calls or emails were read or stored however.
In a statement the Foreign Office said they would not comment in ‘speculation’ but did say: “If you are a terrorist, a serious criminal, a proliferator, a foreign intelligence target or if your activities pose a genuine threat to the national or economic security of the United Kingdom, there is a possibility that your communications will be monitored,.
"If you are not, and if you are not in contact with one of those people, then you won't be. That is true, actually, whether you are British, if you are foreign and wherever you are in the world."