NSA taps in to Google, Skype and others

Robert

Robert

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The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook,Appleand other USinternetgiants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.
The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.
The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers.
Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.
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Prism-001.jpg


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data
 
Well, I can't say I'm surprised by this one. I do love the garish power point presentation, though. It's eye-wateringly painful enough that it has to be legit. I wish I could see the rest of it. lol
 
is there any proof that this actually does find criminals??
 
The one thing the infographic fails to do is to show the date that PRISM began it's work. That'd be FISA as passed under Bush Since that time the US Congress and Obama renewed these laws. Both parties worked together to bring this about. Again I'd love to blame only Obama. (And certainly he deserves some blame.) However, that'd be a 1 stop answer and far short of the truth of the number of people it takes to work together to do this sort of thing. Example: Republicans tell us this is a good thing

And wow AOL? You mean people still use their stuff? That must be the last 2% of the nation.
 
Well, I always thought the NSA had full access to everything but a narrow mandate in terms of what they can do with that data. They are not a crime fighting organization, they are a national security organization, meaning, if they uncover some major crime plot they are bound not to do anything about it unless the crime is of national importance. That was always my understanding of the NSA so I'm not sure what all these recent NSA revelations are about as I see nothing new. I'm also pretty certain that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) does the exact same thing and always has.

What did everyone else think the NSA did?
 
faethor said:
And wow AOL? You mean people still use their stuff? That must be the last 2% of the nation.
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we always used those cds they gave out as target practice... lol... good gawd... they musta consumed half of the used plastic in the 90's... hahaha!! they stuck em to cereal boxes, bulk mails that i prolly got twenty alone of, pretty much anything and everything... heh heh... oooh 24 hrs for free... woohooo!!
 
faethor said:
And wow AOL? You mean people still use their stuff? That must be the last 2% of the nation.
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They've branched out. They now give away for "free" what they would normally charge for behind the walled garden. In other words, they abandoned the old school Microsoft/Apple business model and adopted the newer Google/Facebook model. They own stuff like Engadget and The Huffington Post. So if you've been to either of those sites (and many more that they own) you've added to their coffers via advertising revenue that they get from each page load.
 
With all the hacks from China. I wouldn't be surprised to find China has all the USA records on all phones , as well.
 
Years ago the NSA had a deal with AT&T where all the traffic from a transpacific internet cable was being duplicated to a separate secure server room in one of their buildings. Now, that's the kind of raw snooping I expect. However, private companies just agreeing to turn over their customer's information is a bit more upsetting. We expect the spooks to be spooky and so we naturally distrust them. The businesses we deal with we have a different expectation from. A relationship with a business has to have at least some modicum of trust - else people couldn't do business with each other.
 
Relax - it's only meta data.

“Our courts have consistently recognized that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in this type of metadata information and thus no search warrant is required to obtain it,”
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What could be the harm?
 
Glaucus said:
They've branched out. They now give away for "free" what they would normally charge for behind the walled garden. In other words, they abandoned the old school Microsoft/Apple business model and adopted the newer Google/Facebook model. They own stuff like Engadget and The Huffington Post. So if you've been to either of those sites (and many more that they own) you've added to their coffers via advertising revenue that they get from each page load.
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Thanks! My post was sarcastic in nature. AOL has indeed been on a buying model. They've bought popular internet sites at their peak of popularity. Not a good investment strategy. Perhaps AOL was able to get money from the Gov for your data and that's what's keeping theme alive? ;)


@Thread,
Sadly this is where a decade of both parties desire to pass and maintain the Patriot Act has got us. The law was always a ill formed kneejerk reaction. We have to give up our freedoms to be free is not in any sense a legit argument. Don't renew the Patriot Act, even better overturn it.
 
The attack on the twin towers has helped to accelerate the program of global surveillance and spying but it didn't start there, of course. We've all been around long enough to have watched this coming. If we go back to before 9/11 we see that things have already advanced quite a long way. 1999 was the year that it was discovered that there was a secret NSA key built into every version of windows. 2001 was the year that Europe finally had enough of Echelon (which seems to have been used by the Americans to spy on European businesses for the benefit of US businesses).

There's a nice little resource page on US data monitoring programs here, where I think I found this register article subtitled "Every day, we have to prove we have 'nothing to hide'".


In 1999, the European Parliament commissioned reports on Echelon, and then asked for further checks and legal recommendations for controlling spying from EP vice president Gerhard Schmid. Schmid's detailed recommendations were passed without exception by the full parliament on 5 September 2001. They would have been an important new step to protect the privacy of global communications. But in less than a week, the project to control Echelon and its like lost moral authority. The proposals soon sank into the dustbin of history.
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Top Secret America is the product of two years' of research by former military intelligence analyst Bill Arkin and a team from the Washington Post. They found that since 9/11, more than 1,200 government agencies and 2,000 private corporations at over 10,000 locations within the United States alone have created an unstoppable and barely controllable top secret network to support the GWOT.
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I love the irresponsible failures of reason to blame only 1 person here. Obama, certainly, has blame, but we need to look at a decade of Congress and the last President as well.

I wish it were just Obama then the solution would be easy. Unfortunately, it's not and the solution is far more complicated than that false belief would indicate.
 
So what steps can be taken to correct things? Well, even Republicans think the Obama way is the best way - prosecute the whistleblower.

(Coz the thing that crooks hate more than the cops is a rat)
 
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