[Top-secret NSA's] documents [... make] clear that the agency collects and analyzes significant amounts of data from US communications systems in the course of monitoring foreign targets: [...] the NSA is able to direct [75%] of the internet traffic it intercepts from its collection points into its own repositories. [...] -- “After the EvilOlive [program] deployment, traffic has literally doubled.”

One end of the communications collected are inside the United States, [... but] a substantial portion of the internet metadata still collected and analyzed by the NSA comes from allied governments, including its British counterpart, GCHQ: An SSO entry dated September 21, 2012, announced that “Transient Thurible, a new Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) managed XKeyScore (XKS) Deep Dive was declared operational.” The entry states that GCHQ “modified” an existing program so the NSA could “benefit” from what GCHQ harvested: “Transient Thurible metadata [has been] flowing into NSA repositories since 13 August 2012”, the entry states.