The NSA could collect far more than your phone records from mobile operators

The revelation that the National Security Agency is collecting our phone records has generated considerable outrage, but phone call metadata is just the beginning of what our nation’s spooks could gather from our mobile carriers if they put their minds and resources to the task. The carriers don’t just know whom we are calling, when and where. They have the infrastructure in place that allows them to track the websites we visit and the applications we use on our phones and tablets. They know all of this because it’s their job to know. When our phones connect to the internet they don’t just magically grok with Google or Facebook. That data is routed through carrier network cores, where packet-sniffing, traffic-shaping, and content optimization engines lie in wait. And — at least in the past — they’ve actually put such monitoring software directly onto our phones (more on that in a bit).