Edward Snowden championed the USA Freedom Act in a Thursday op-ed for the New York Times.

The National Security Agency has expanded its search for information about cyber attacks to American soil, based on the most recent documents from the Edward Snowden leak.

According to The New York Times and ProPublica, the Justice Department in 2012 allowed the NSA to start monitoring U.S. Internet cables without a warrant to find information about cyber attacks that originated overseas.

Specifically, the agency was looking for “cybersignatures” that matched up with evidence of attacks committed by foreign governments, ProPublica said. But it also spied on hackers without links to other governments, the documents said.

This revelation comes just as 4 million Office of Personnel Management (OPM) employee records were breached by who officials suspect are Chinese hackers.

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“It should come as no surprise that the U.S. government gathers intelligence on foreign powers that attempt to penetrate U.S. networks and steal the private information of U.S. citizens and companies,” Brian Hale, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told ProPublica and the Times.

The trouble is, this type of Internet surveillance involves copying data as the hacker steals it, the Times said, potentially putting your information into the hands of the feds.

Neither the NSA nor the Justice Department immediately responded to PCMag’s request for comment.

News of the program’s expansion comes just days after President Obama approved legislation, the USA Freedom Act, to reduce the federal government’s surveillance of American phone records. But that revamps portions of the Patriot Act, the Times said, and does not apply to warrantless wiretapping.

Snowden, however, championed the USA Freedom Act in a Thursday New York Times op-ed.

When he first decided to leak the NSA documents, Snowden worried that the disclosure would have no impact.

“Two years on, the difference is profound,” he wrote. “In a single month, the N.S.A.’s invasive call-tracking program was declared unlawful by the courts and disowned by Congress.

“After a White House-appointed oversight board investigation found that this program had not stopped a single terrorist attack, even the president who once defended its propriety and criticized its disclosure has now ordered it terminated,” Snowden continued.

“This is the power of an informed public,” he said.

For more, see 7 Chilling Ways the NSA Can Spy On You, as well as The NSA and the End of Privacy.