The latest disclosures from Edward Snowden reveal the National Security Agency is collecting large volumes of electronic contact lists from people around the world, including Americans. According to The Washington Post, the NSA is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal email and instant messaging accounts. Intelligence officials say the practice would be illegal if carried out on U.S. soil, so the collection takes place abroad through deals with foreign companies and intelligence agencies. Data from Americans frequently leaves the country because companies like Google and Facebook operate data centers abroad. The scope of the collection is vast; in a single day last year, the NSA harvested nearly 700,000 email address books.