Report: NSA ‘drowning in information’

The National Security Agency is “drowning in information” it gets from surveillance programs, sources familiar with the programs told The Wall Street Journal.

Thanks to the NSA’s surveillance programs, “the agency is drowning in useless data,” The Wall Street Journal reported based on claims from former NSA employee William Binney.

{mosads}“Analysts are swamped with so much information that they can’t do their jobs effectively, and the enormous stockpile is an irresistible temptation for misuse,” according to the report, which detailed Binney’s earlier attempts to increase the NSA’s Internet surveillance capabilities while protecting Americans’ privacy.

Through his lawyer, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden told The Wall Street Journal the NSA is “blinding people with data we don’t need.”

“When your working process every morning starts with poking around a haystack of seven billion innocent lives, you’re going to miss things,” Snowden said.

An NSA spokeswoman responded to the claims of over collection by saying that the agency is “not collecting everything, but we do need the tools to collect intelligence on foreign adversaries who wish to do harm to the nation and its allies,” according to the report.