NSA keeps metadata on millions of people for up to a year, builds ‘pattern-of-life’ profiles of non-NSA targets

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New top secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency (NSA) is storing metadata for up to a year and building a detailed profile of millions of people, even if they are not directly targeted by the NSA.

On Saturday, it was revealed that the NSA uses metadata to create “sophisticated graphs” of the social connections of U.S. citizens. Last week, there were major debates in Congress over NSA surveillance, with some senators moving to protect the program as officials repeatedly dodged direct questions.

It is somewhat surprising that it is only stored for one year, given that the National Counterterrorism Center stores private data on Americans with no links to terrorism for five years.

The metadata collected includes everything from browsing history, including map searches and a list of visited websites, to account details, email activity and even some account passwords, according to the Guardian.

As one can imagine, such extensive data can be used to build a detailed profile of an individual and their life, something which the NSA is doing, according to recently revealed documents.

An introductory guide to digital network intelligence distributed to NSA field agents, leaked by Edward Snowden, reveals a database codenamed Marina.

Marina stores computer metadata gathered by NSA collection systems, while telephone metadata is stored in a separate repository.

“The Marina metadata application tracks a user’s browser experience, gathers contact information/content and develops summaries of target,” the guide explains, according to the Guardian. “This tool offers the ability to export the data in a variety of formats, as well as create various charts to assist in pattern-of-life development.”

The Marina database is capable of allowing analysts to look back over a year’s worth of metadata for millions of people.

“Of the more distinguishing features, Marina has the ability to look back on the last 365 days’ worth of DNI metadata seen by the Sigint collection system, regardless whether or not it was tasked for collection,” the guide states (emphasis in original).

This adds a new level of troubling detail to the Saturday report by The New York Times. The Times report revealed that the NSA not only builds profiles of Americans’ social connections and even locations but also collects “material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data.”

As the Guardian points out, the material gathered from the commercial sector “is is not subject to the same legal restrictions as other data.”

Marina collects metadata culled by the NSA from a variety of sources including dragnet surveillance programs like PRISM and more targeted surveillance as well.

A great deal of metadata is gathered from the undersea fiber-optic cables that make up the backbone of the global internet.

“By confirming that all metadata ‘seen’ by NSA collection systems is stored, the Marina document suggests such collections are not merely used to filter target information, but also to store data at scale,” the Guardian notes.

While such massive collection and the fact that it is used to build profiles of Americans who are not directly targeted by the NSA is likely not a surprise, this is the first time that this NSA program has been confirmed by government documents.