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:
My colleague Kalev Leetaru recently co-authored this comprehensive study on the various sources and accuracies of geographic information on Twitter. This is the first detailed study of its kind. The detailed analysis, which runs some 50-pages long, has important implications vis-a-vis the use of social media in emergency management and humanitarian response. Should you not have the time to analyze the comprehensive study, this blog post highlights the most important and relevant findings.
“In chapters 1 and 2 we present a concise synopsis of the various forms of value creation. Subsequently we describe and delve deeper into the technological and societal shifts, as viewed both from a business context and by individuals in their socio-cultural context (chapters 3 and 4). Following that, we examine new forms of value creation (chapter 5) and new income models (chapter 6). In chapter 7 we deal with the design principles of meaningful experiences, while chapter 8 deals more comprehensively than before with the five phases of intangible value creation. We have also elected to probe more deeply into the experience economy in the health sector (chapter 9), the financial services sector (chapter 10) and the creative city (chapter 11). We concentrate particularly on the transformation that these sectors are undergoing. In these particular areas there is sufficient urgency and potential to facilitate the creation of intangible value and meaningful experiences.
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.
