The National Security Agency and the Government Communications Headquarters were able to access numerous Telephone companies only to be able to "map the entire Internet - any device, anywhere, all the time".
As reported by a German journalist, with a set of leaked documents provided by the notorious whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the five biggest intelligence agencies of the world have been working together to be able to get an almost real time visualization of the global internet as part of this NSA surveillance program.
This program picked up after the end of the cold war, doesn't only include large chunks of data but information from every single device that is connected to the internet anywhere in the world, be it a simple desktop computer to a smartphone.
As quoted by the repoter
"[The program aims] to map the Internet, and not just the large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. It also seeks to identify the devices across which our data flows, so-called routers. [The program] allows for the creation of an ‘interactive map of the global Internet’ in ‘near real-time,"
The US Officials claimed that the program was only used to map foreign and US Defence Department networks.
Source: TheHackerNews
