White House Surveillance Response: 'Only a Very Small Percentage' Examined

Insists in the face of latest news that people's e-mails aren't being read.

White House press secretary Jay Carney defended National Security Agency programs on Thursday, saying they "examine only a very small percentage" of the world's Internet traffic.

Carney insisted that emails sent by ordinary Americans overseas were "not being read" and that NSA was only collecting information it was "explicitly authorized" to collect. 

"And while NSA analysts examine only a very small percentage of the world's traffic, if communications of U.S. persons are incidentally collected, the agency must follow minimization procedures that are approved by the U.S. attorney general and designed to protect the privacy of U.S. persons," he said at his daily press briefing.