This fact was revealed in the Washington Post. It indicates that the National Security Agency has been authorized by the court in charge of the NSA to spy on 193 nations.
There are more than 193?
This means that the NSA will overload its bureaucratic circuits on a scale never before imagined. How can any bureaucracy evaluate that much digital data? It can’t. For what purpose? Its bureaucrats do not know.
The NSA is trapped by the technological imperative: “If it can be done, it must be done.” This always paralyzes bureaucracies.
Virtually no foreign government is off-limits for the National Security Agency, which has been authorized to intercept information “concerning” all but four countries, according to top-secret documents.
The United States has long had broad no-spying arrangements with those four countries — Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — in a group known collectively with the United States as the Five Eyes. But a classified 2010 legal certification and other documents indicate the NSA has been given a far more elastic authority than previously known, one that allows it to intercept through U.S. companies not just the communications of its overseas targets but any communications about its targets as well.
The certification — approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and included among a set of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden — lists 193 countries that would be of valid interest for U.S. intelligence. The certification also permitted the agency to gather intelligence about entities including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
This decision is as meaningful as any in absentia trial where one is convicted without the right to appear and have an opportunity to defend oneself.
Good !.. they will be so busy snooping into things that don't concern them .. maybe they will leave us alone ..