New Snowden leak reveals NSA tracks and analyses the location of 'hundreds of millions' of mobile phones

NEW revelations from documents leaked by fugitive Edward Snowden show spies are tracking the location of 'hundreds of millions' of mobile phones on a daily basis.

THEY know where you are. New revelations from documents leaked by fugitive Edward Snowden show spies are tracking the location of the world's mobile phones.

The latest revelation, published by the Washington Post, shows that the National Security Agency is taking 5 billion records of phone movements around the world each day.

This data is then referenced and archived in a computer system called CO-TRAVELLER for future analysis.

This would enable the spy agency to build up a pattern of an individual's habits and activities, and even 'map relationships' by identifying where a mobile phone has been.

The records reveal the NSA is using a loophole in surveillance and privacy laws by collecting the data "incidentally".

It argues that it is not intentionally seeking this information, but, rather, the data comes attached to other - legal - search requests.

The end result is a mass surveillance tool on a scale previously unimaginable, the Washington Post reports.

The newspaper reports a NSA official as confirming the revelation. He insists the program was legal and intended to develop intelligence about foreign targets.

A legal officer for the Director of National Intelligence told the Washington Post "there is no element of the intelligence community that under any authority is intentionally collecting bulk cellphone location information about cellphones in the United States."

However, where such data was provided "unintentionally" provided an opportunity to monitor movements of US citizens within the US.

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