by Jon Queally, Common Dreams:

The latest reporting from The Intercept reveals how individuals across the world who work as ‘system administrators’ for computer and online networks had their personal computers and digital information targeted by National Security Agency hacking units as a way for the agency to gain access to the systems they controlled.

Though those targeted were not suspected of any wrong doing whatsoever, internal NSA documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show that these people, called “sys admins” for short, had their email and Facebook accounts tracked as the government hackers tried to access their “network maps, customer lists, [and] business correspondence.”

The overall effort by the NSA relates to previously reported programs based on Snowden documents that show efforts by the US surveillance agency and their British counterparts at the GCHQ to gain direct access to “foreign network routers” and other digital systems without the companies or governments who control those networks knowing. “Who better to target than the person that already has the ‘keys to the kingdom’?” asks one NSA-employed hacker in a post cited by The Intercept.

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