Digital age expanded the NSA's mission

It wasn't long ago that the National Security Agency, the intelligence agency responsible for intercepting global communications, seemed overwhelmed by the Internet. "We in the NSA are encountering problems with the flood of information," Eric Haseltine, then the NSA director of research, said in a 2004 speech. "We can either be drowned by it, or we can get on our surfboard and let it propel us." NSA chose the surfboard. Or rather, many of them. Determined to identify and track Al Qaeda terrorists and to prevent another attack after Sept. 11, 2001, the NSA set about vastly enlarging its ability to capture, store and exploit the ocean of texts, emails, videos and other electronic communications. "They took on a new mission that required sifting vast amounts of data to find a few important signals," said Stewart Baker, who was the NSA's general counsel from 1992 to 1994 and held top Homeland Security Department jobs in the George W. Bush administration. Today the NSA secretly siphons an almost unimaginable number of foreign government, corporate and private communications from the World Wide Web