National Security Agency (NSA) tracks roughly 5 billion mobile phones every day

A new report in The Washington Post suggests that the National Security Agency (NSA) tracks roughly 5 billion mobile phones every day, a number that will do nothing to quiet the current fervor over the intelligence agency’s information-gathering practices.

The Post drew a portion of its information from top-secret documents provided by Edward Snowden, a government whistleblower who once worked as a contractor for the NSA. It also interviewed U.S. intelligence officials, including an anonymous one who spoke with the permission of the NSA.

The NSA dumps those billions of phone records into a huge database, which data scientists and others can mine for a better understanding of targeted individuals’ relationships. Those analytics tools, known as CO-TRAVELER, can help the NSA find “unknown associates of known intelligence targets,” according to the Post report.