Spain’s El Mundo newspaper, reports that the NSA tracked tens of millions of phone calls, texts and emails of Spanish citizens, in December 2012 and January 2013. The monitoring allegedly peaked on 11 December. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24708410

The White House has so far declined to comment on the El Mundo report.

It is not clear how the alleged surveillance was carried out, whether it was through monitoring fibre-optic cables, data obtained from telecommunication companies, or other means.

The NSA is reported to have collected the sender and recipient addresses of emails, along with their IP addresses, the message file size, and sometimes the top or subject line of the message.

For each telephone call, the numbers of the caller and recipient are believed to have been logged, as was its duration, time, date and location.

The NSA has also suggested it does not usually store the geolocational information of mobile phone calls, which could determined by noting which mobile signal towers were used.