The NSA tapped millions of lines in Spain

From El Mundo (Spain)

The National Security Agency (NSA) spied on 60.5 million calls in Spain just between December 2012 and early January of this year, according to a graphic that is part of the secret documents of former NSA agent Edward Snowden, to which El Mundo has gained exclusive access.

Under the title “Spain: Last 30 Days,” a bar graphic shows a daily flow of calls, defined by the initials DNR, intercepted during the days between Dec. 11, 2012 and Jan. 8 of this year.

On Dec. 11, the U.S. spied on more than 3.5 million calls recorded on Spanish soil. It was the day of maximum flow. Conversely, between Dec. 30 and Jan. 2 no calls appear on the graphic, coinciding with a substantial drop in data traffic monitored during the Christmas season.

The espionage does not record the content of the calls but the serial numbers of the [telephone] sets communicating with one another, their location, the telephone number on the [prepaid cell-phone] SIM cards used, and the duration of the call.

The interception carried out by the U.S. also includes intrusions in information of a personal nature through the Internet navigator, e-mails, and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

The recording of data carried out by the NSA is described as a crime in the [Spanish] Penal Code. Spanish Law 25/2007, on the storage of data relative to electronic communications and public communication networks, protects the privacy of this type of information.

Among the documents to which El Mundo has gained access is also an explanation by the NSA about the operation and objectives of “Boundless Informant,” a software that allows its users to summarize and understand the information gathered by the signal-intelligence systems (SIGINT) that the NSA uses to intercept communications.

According to that explanation, a graphic such as the one that shows [the daily interceptions] in Spain was developed automatically by that program, without the need for an operator’s intervention.