High-level British government officials are now publicly questioning a newly revealed deal that allowed the National Security Agency to “unmask” incidental data captured by citizens of the United Kingdom.

On Thursday, Malcolm Rifkind, the chair of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, told The Guardian, "As with any significant stories concerning any of the intelligence agencies, we will require and receive a full report from them on this."

The Guardian first reported the 2007 agreement between the two allies on Wednesday, citing documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The newspaper reported that the agreement between the American and British signals intelligence agencies show that the NSA is now allowed to analyze and keep British mobile phone numbers, fax numbers, and other “selectors” as a way to conduct “contact chaining” analysis. Previously, the NSA had only been able to collect UK landline numbers.

Citing the 2007 memo, the NSA is apparently not allowed to specifically target UK communications content but rather seems to have unfettered access to metadata.

According to the memo, the NSA:

• "[Is] authorized to unmask UK contact identifiers resulting from incidental collection."

• "May utilize the UK contact identifiers in [signals intelligence] development contact chaining analysis."

• "May retain unminimized UK contact identifiers incidentally collected under this authority within content and metadata stores and provided to follow-on USSS (US Sigint System) applications."

The document apparently does not reveal whether this decision was taken unilaterally by the American and British spy services or whether it was approved by the White House or 10 Downing Street, the office of the British Prime Minister.

This week, earlier revelations from The Guardian also forced Norwegian spy services to come clean about its own domestic spying operations.

Meanwhile, the paper has revealed that Australia’s spy agencies targeted the government of Indonesia, its immediate neighbor to the north.

The Indonesian government has reacted angrily, with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono saying on Twitter that he had recalled Indonesia's ambassador to Australia and added that “[t]hese US & Australian actions have certainly damaged the strategic partnerships with Indonesia, as fellow democracies.”

The scandal has blown up in Indonesia and Australia, with major Australian newspaper The Age observing: “Relations between Canberra and Jakarta have descended to their lowest level since the East Timor crisis as the Indonesian President ordered his country's troops to stop joint exercises with Australians in Darwin, and the navy to halt any joint patrols to combat people smuggling.”