MS, Yahoo FB, Apple and the rest all deny they know anything the NSA's program – implemented with these tech giant's cooperation – called “PRISM.” It's evident from this article they are all lying:
” America, here's hoping you've had enough time to be come to terms with the National Security Agency scooping up all of your metadata pertaining to all of the phone calls you've been making with Verizon, because here comes the next fun news about the government's far-reaching panopticon of total information surveillance, courtesy of Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras of The Washington Post:
The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.
The highly classified program, code-named PRISM, has not been disclosed publicly before. Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy. Even late last year, when critics of the foreign intelligence statute argued for changes, the only members of Congress who know about PRISM were bound by oaths of office to hold their tongues.
The Washington Post obtained “briefing slides” from an “internal presentation on the Silicon Valley operation, intended for senior analysts in the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate,” from a “career intelligence officer” who cited “firsthand experience with these systems, and horror at their capabilities,” as the reason for the disclosure. These materials described PRISM as “the most prolific contributor to the President's Daily Brief” and the NSA's “leading source of raw material, accounting for nearly 1 in 7 intelligence reports.” The Post, goes on to report that while PRISM allows the NSA to collect “anything it likes” from the available data, it is in practice not utilized as a “dragnet” per se:
Analysts who use the system from a Web portal at Fort Meade key in “selectors,” or search terms, that are designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness.” That is not a very stringent test. Training materials obtained by the Post instruct new analysts to submit accidentally collected U.S. content for a quarterly report, “but it’s nothing to worry about.”
One may nevertheless worry about this thing that is “nothing to worry about/”
More:
RELATED
Huh?
NSA taps in to user data of Facebook, Apple, Google and others, secret files reveal
• Top secret PRISM program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Facebook and Apple
• Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007
NSA's PRISM Sounds Like A Darn Good Idea To Me: This Is What Governments Are For
Data surveillance in the U.S.: necessary or ‘obscenely outrageous'?
It's Not Just Phone Calls…They're Stalking Us Online Too, Everywhere!
This goes far beyond just Verizon. We're talking about google, email, documents, phone calls, microsoft, apple, verizon, yahoo, facebook, google, bing, SKYPE…. everything.. This is huge news, especially that this is on mainstream media! Lets see, how many scandals have we uncovered so far this year? Lets recap on the progress:
- Tons of resignations, arrests, retirements
- Tons of investigations into corruption and misuse of money, bribery, etc.!!
- The Phone Tapping Scandal was recently, with the Associated Press, mostly if not entirely in the UK.. Maybe not this year, or maybe continuing into this year, I'm not certain.
- This scandal with the government spying on us…
- I'm sure there are others. Well. Like.. my entire blog, really.
Documents: U.S. mining data from 9 leading Internet firms; companies deny knowledge
Tech Giants, Like Telecoms, Have Been Sharing With the NSA
NSA Is Wired Into Top Internet Companies’ Servers, Including Google and Facebook
New leak shows feds can access user accounts for Google, Facebook and more
Since the librarians revolted about being required to secretly report the book borrowing habits of their patrons, I have been warning people that we are entering a national security police state, and I have repeatedly warned you that anything you say on a phone! , or write in an email is subject to surveillance.
Over the past several years a number of my conservative readers have written me, particularly during the Bush years, to tell me that I was being paranoid, and alarmist, and that this was necessary for the War on Terror. In the last two days confirmation of every one of my assertions has been revealed to be true, and it is even worse than I thought. In the U.S. privacy as a concept and right no longer exists. Welcome to 21st century America.
The only difference between the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration is that the Obama Administration is better at writing the laws and regulations so that this is all perfectly legal.
Documents: U.S. Mining Data From 9 Leading Internet Firms; Companies Deny Knowledge
BARTON GELLMAN and LAURA POITRAS – The Washington Post
HISTORICAL
2013 NSA Internet Tapping, a History
2012 The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
Phi Beta Iota: Secret intelligence is the smallest, cheapest, fastest “fix” that the President and the new National Security Advisor could enact. It also has the fewest financial constituents, and the most domestic opponents. Dismantling the DNI and restoring John Brennan as DCI (in return for his giving up the drone program), firing Alexander and converting NSA into a National Processing Agency, and funding the Open Source Agency as a preamble to transferring $100B a year from Program 50 to Program 150 (how can John Kerry say no after that?), while cutting the military by 30% over three years and simultaneously forcing the Secretary of Defense to be tough and smart in creating a 450-ship Navy, a long-haul Air Force, and an air-mobile Army are all righteous needed steps. Beyond that — using the Open Source Agency as an element of the Executive Office of the President — lie Whole of Government coherence and effectiveness using legal ethical open-source decision-support to achieve hybrid public governance. This is not rocket-science — status quo is expensive idiocy; alternative is inexpensive intelligence with integrity. Let's see just how smart the new National Security Adviser wants to be….
See Also:
2010: OPINION–America’s Cyber Scam
2009 Perhaps We Should Have Shouted: A Twenty-Year Restrospective
2006 Forbes Blank Slate On Intelligence
2002 TIME Magazine The New Craft of Intelligence
Fixing the White House and National Intelligence, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Spring 2010
Intelligence for the President–AND Everyone Else, as published in CounterPunch, Weekend Edition, February 27 – 1 March 2009
Open Source Agency Executive Access Point
Susan Rice, a provocateur in the West Wing
Susan Rice and John Kerry Will Battle For Obama’s Ear
