The Washington Post reports on the National Security Agency’s (NSA) harvesting of hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world. Each day, the NSA collects contacts from about 500,000 buddy lists and web-based e-mail accounts, the report states. Meanwhile, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli has asked Supreme Court justices not to hear the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s case asking for an immediate shutdown of NSA phone surveillance of Americans. In San Francisco, tech company BitTorrent has owned up to defacing its own billboards in order to capitalize on privacy fears following NSA revelations. And a U.S. appellate court has unsealed a set of documents pertaining to Lavabit, whose founder resisted government pressure for access to it. Ars Technica says, despite NSA revelations, foreign e-mail providers may not be any safer from government intrusion than those based in the U.S. (Registration may be required to access this story.)
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