1. The NSA can still access your phone records
In 2018, the NSA acquired data from over 600 million phone calls and text messages. It proceeded to delete many of them, citing “technical irregularities” but didn’t specify how many were expunged from servers. The USA FREEDOM Act, passed in 2015, puts the onus on telecommunication providers to hold on to phone records, after which they can be requested by the NSA rather than the spy agency keeping tabs on them directly.

This has meant that the overall extent of phone records collected by the NSA has gone down—but it’s hard to take their word at face value. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that the NSA has straight up lied about its surveillance policies.

2. Big Tech passes your data to the NSA
Facebook, Google, Apple, and six other leading online services have all gone on record as having given their customers’ data to the NSA, as legally required by the “PRISM” program. Data shared includes emails, messages, and documents.

3. The NSA can hack your devices
When the NSA finds a security hole in a popular consumer device, it does not fix the security hole, but instead exploits it. The NSA’s hacking unit, Tailored Access Operations, has developed a whole range of hacking exploits. These enable the NSA to break into consumer electronics devices and IT systems as it sees fit.

4. The NSA puts “backdoors” in your devices
The NSA has made the job of hacking security devices easier for itself by coercing many manufacturers to build vulnerabilities into products. The NSA supposedly created new guidelines surrounding this practice after the Snowden revelations but refuses to say what those guidelines are.

If that isn’t enough, the NSA is known to intercept shipments of computers and phones to put “backdoors” on them. The backdoor circumvents security measures of the device, allowing the NSA to spy on the end user.

5. The NSA can track you wherever you are
When you move around town, cell phone towers can calculate your exact position. Though the NSA claims it no longer collects this bulk data itself, cell phone providers are still required to do so, and they, in turn, must surrender those records to the NSA when ordered by a court.

By far the worst aspect of this unwieldy power is that you don’t even have to be the subject of an inquiry yourself. The data of millions can be handed over, without notice, because you had even the most tangential connection to a person under surveillance.