Bamford explained that, in the 1990s, everything changed for NSA. Previously, they'd been able to intercept electronic communications by using big dishes to capture what was coming down to Earth from telecom satellites.
But with the shift to fiber-optic cables, NSA was shut out. So they devised new methods.
For example, they set up a secret spy room at an AT&T office in San Francisco. NSA installed new equipment that enabled them to tap into the fiber-optic cables and suck up all traffic.
How Bamford describes this, in 2008, tells you exactly where the PRISM program came from:
Privacy: The US NSA’s PRISM program appears to be a set of specialized deep-packet inspection filters combined with pre-existing wiretapping points at high-level Internet carriers in the United States. Since the program’s revelation the day before yesterday, speculations have ranged far and wide about who does what to make this surveillance state nightmare possible. Adding it all together, it would appear that the social tech companies did not, repeat not, supply bulk data about their users at the US Government’s will – but that the situation for you as an end user remains just as if they had.
The day before yesterday, news broke – no, detonated – that the NSA named nine social communications companies as “providers” for spy data. Among them were Microsoft, Hotmail, Skype, Apple, and Facebook – no surprises there, activists in repressive countries say “Use once, die once” about Skype – but also companies like Google and Gmail. This raised a lot of eyebrows, not to say fury.
The idea that the companies you trust with your most private data were handing that data wholesale to today’s Stasi equivalents was mind-bogglingly evil and cynical. As the news of this broke, the companies would have been a lot better off if they had just been found out doing something like eating live children.
The impression that companies were playing an active part in providing private data to the NSA was strengthened by the precision of the presentation – that there were dates when each company had, as it seemed, voluntarily joined the surveillance program.
Seeing the companies in question scramble to deny the allegations of the NSA deck – first from on-duty spokespeople with their polished façade, then from CEOs – was the inevitable next step. But this is where things became interesting. While the initial polished façade was barely credible, the response from the CEOs came across as surprised, open, and candid.
So far, there are three parties to this story: the NSA with its leaked slide deck naming the nine companies as data providers, the media who reported on it, and the companies denying any active part in NSA spy activities. The first reaction is that at least one of them must be lying. But I don’t think any of them are. I think the leaked deck from the NSA is genuine, I think the Washington Post and Guardian didn’t conspire to make shit like this up, and I have come to believe the response from the companies. How could this be possible?
At this point, there are three possibilities of what PRISM is:
You get the press and the rest of America following that bouncing ball, and the game's over. Almost no matter what the outcome of the trial is, if you can convince the American people that this case is about mental state of a single troubled kid from Crescent, Oklahoma, then the propaganda war has been won already.
Because in reality, this case does not have anything to do with who Bradley Manning is, or even, really, what his motives were. This case is entirely about the “classified” materials Manning had access to, and whether or not they contained widespread evidence of war crimes.
This whole thing, this trial, it all comes down to one simple equation. If you can be punished for making public a crime, then the government doing the punishing is itself criminal.
Yesterday, briefly, we were confused by the eruption in the stock market following a not too bad sub-200K nonfarm payrolls number. Because we know that in the New Normal bad is always good, no matter what the well-coifed TV pundit du jour tells you. Then we remembered that yesterday is when the USDA releases its monthly Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program data, i.e. Americans on Foodstamps.
It was here that the ramp was perfectly explained, because while the bad (for stocks of course) data was that individual foodstamps recipients rose by 170K in March – if just a whisker below all time highs – it was the number of American households on foodstamps, which rose to a new all time high of 23,116,441 (each collecting an average of $274.30 per month) that perfectly explained the Dow Jones' 200 point surge higher: the transfer of wealth from the poor and middle-classes to the 1% continues without a hiccup.
Privacy: This night, news broke that the USA’s security agencies have been wiretapping essentially every major centralized social service for private data. Photos, video conferences, text chats, and voice calls – everything. We have been saying this for years and been declared tinfoil hat and conspiracy nuts; it’s good to finally see the documents in black on white.
This night, European time, thenewsbroke that the USA’s National Security Agency (NSA) has had direct access to pretty much every social network for the past several years, dating back to 2007, under a program named PRISM. Under the program, a number of social services voluntarily feed people’s private data to the NSA. In short, if you have been using/uploading
e-mail
video or voice chat
videos
photos
stored data
VoIP calls
file transfers
video conferencing
(and more)
…from any of…
Microsoft (incl. Hotmail et al), since Sep 11, 2007
Pentagon uses advanced bunker buster bombs to destroy replica of underground facility as part of experiment whose results were relayed to friendly nations
The Pentagon has recently completed a series of field exercises on US soil as part of which a replica of an underground nuclear facility was destroyed, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Friday. The tests were declared a resounding success having exceeded all expectations.
The results of the experiment were relayed to friendly nations with the aim of reassuring them as to the US's ability to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities in a single strike. It was also meant to convey that the US is serious in its intentions to attack Iran should circumstances allow it.
