Confused about how the NSA gathers info? Check out this nifty animation

When NSA-contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed just how much of our online activity was being captured by US and UK security agencies earlier this year, there was a general sense of outrage among members of the public.

The trouble is, despite the outrage, the technical details of exactly how that information is gathered have always been a little difficult for the average person on the street to understand. Fortunately, The Guardian (which first published Snowden’s leaks) has produced an informative animated video giving you the full lowdown on how information around your online activities is collected and what happens to it once it is.

The video, which is part of the newspaper’s Made Simple series, uses fairly simple animation and a jazzy soundtrack to make a fairly complex topic accessible. By avoiding jargon, the video also does a pretty good job of explaining what implications this kind of surveillance has for every day web users.