REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
A reporter takes a mobile phone picture of National Security Agency (NSA) Director U.S. Army General Keith Alexander as he takes his seat to testify before a U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on recently disclosed NSA surveillance programs, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington June 18, 2013.
According to a new report published by the New York Times and ProPublica on Thursday, starting in 2012, the NSA and the FBI launched a secret campaign against foreign hackers that involved surveillance of Americans' personal data.
The report notes that the agencies came into possession of vast amounts of American' internet search data as they monitored the information that hackers were processing.
Though the Justice Department only authorized the agencies to look into suspicious activity that originated from a foreign source, the Times reveals that the NSA and the FBI pursued supposed hackers even if they could not prove a connection to foreign countries.
The report is based on a new set of documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden, whose revelations about the NSA's bulk data collection program sparked outcry and a national debate about US spying.
The Times report comes only two days after President Barack Obama signed the USA Freedom Act into law. The act officially ends the NSA's bulk data collection program, though it permits the administration to restart the NSA program for six months.
The USA Freedom Act reigns in some of the NSA's surveillance activities, but it does not place additional restrictions on the surveillance program that permits the US to spy on foreign governments.
In a previous round of revelations about secret US spying, the Guardian reported that the NSA and British intelligence secretly tapped undersea fiber cables that connect internet servers between countries, collecting vast amounts of personal data and sifting through it for information about suspicious targets.