WASHINGTON (TheBlaze/AP) -- The New York Times is reporting that the National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the U.S. to conduct surveillance on those machines.
FILE - This June 6, 2013, file photo shows the sign outside the National Security Agency campus in Fort Meade, Md. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
The Times cites NSA documents, computer experts and U.S. officials in its report about the use of secret technology using radio waves to gain access to computers that other countries have tried to protect from spying or cyberattacks.
The NSA calls the effort an "active defense" and has used the technology to monitor units of the Chinese Army, the Russian military, drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime U.S. partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan.
"While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials," the New York Times reports.
The report also states the radio frequency hardware actually has to be "physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user."
The NSA says the technology has not been used in computers in the U.S.
