Posted on 06/07/2013 1:52:12 AM PDT by lbryce
The US tech scene has been shaken with allegations that authorities are monitoring US and international Internet users on Facebook, Google, YouTube and countless other services from the likes of Yahoo, Apple, Skype, AOL, Microsoft and more.
The news broke via reports from the Washington Post and the Guardian, and has rightly garnered coverage across many news websites (TNW included) but the sudden rush of news has left many people unsure of all the details, or confused by the onslaught of details.
Here’s our essential guide to understanding what PRISM is, why it is important and other details that you need to know. The basics
PRISM is the code name for the data collection program which was born out of the Protect America Act. The legislation was approved by Congress in 2007 that allowed warrantless interception of foreign-to-foreign communications.
The program is intended for use as a counter-terrorism tool that allows US authorities to access data and information belonging to suspects that they believe pose a threat to US national security.
Both the Washington Post and Guardian claim that the NSA has “direct” access to the system belonging to nine Internet companies, in order to monitor data. That information was required in order to “effectively plan, direct and conduct detection and monitoring of illegal narcoterrorist activities”, as highlighted in a past job opening.
The companies from which data is gathered include: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple. Other services including — Dropbox — were reportedly set to be added to the roster.
Controversy around the program circles around whether the tech firms were silently complicit with the monitoring, and whether PRISM monitored US citizens illegally (without warrants.)
The Guardian states that the method of monitoring traffic “opens the possibility” of collecting US data without warrants.
The Post looks at that issue in more detail, concluding that the data capturers are “at least 51 percent confident” that a target is foreign. That, it concludes, means substantial amounts of “incidental” US data could be captured — but the issue is dismissed in NSA training manuals dismiss as being “nothing to worry about”.
The Post says that “a career intelligence officer” leaked the slides because he believes the agency’s role to be a “gross intrusion on privacy”. The anonymous source added: “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type.”
Unanswered questions
There are numerous questions remaining unanswered at this point, chiefly:
All but two firms have denied actively participating in the program, suggesting that the NSA may be filtering and monitoring traffic independently. Both the Guardian and Post implicated the firms as willingly co-operating and opting into the program, so any fact that disproves that would be hugely significant.
Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Skype and Apple have all refuted their involvement in the program, and denied knowledge of it.
A number of the companies stipulated that they don’t provide “direct” access to their systems, which raises the possibility that the NSA may have ‘indirect’ access, perhaps via an API, which would suggest the firms cooperated.
The Washington Post has since backed down on its initial claim that tech companies “participate knowingly” in PRISM data collection.
Despite these denials it is important to consider that the NSA would not have released details of the program name to Internet companies, as ACLU analyst Christopher Soghoian points out. Furthermore, those who receive national security letters are prevented by law from discussing their existence in public.
A statement from James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, claimed the Guardian and Post reports both “contained numerous inaccuracies”. Clapper categorically denied that PRISM spies on US citizens, but he did not elaborate on the other alleged details that were misreported. That leaves the same questions unanswered.
I think if all this data just went into a pit...with no outside world connection to it....and you appointed a special federal judge for twelve months to have only one single job of running the facility and clearing people who might need access.....it might all work.
But there needs to be a law in effect that if anyone used the data for political efforts or brought data out to punish people....then there has to be a minimum of ten years of prison time. You get dragged back to Utah where the data is stored, face the federal judge, with no jury, and accept the punishment handed out. No Presidential pardons allowed. The threat to abuse? It has to be so painful that no political party would ever abuse the situation.
We should plan an overthrow of salt over our shoulders to word off broken mirrors and the ladder it topples.
It is in code.
!enitlavO erom knirD
I imagine President Valerie Jarrett has a lot of mischief still in place with more on the way.
Oops. I bet their computers have already scanned ours posts looking for the magic words so they can haul our butts in for at least an IRS audit or worse.
Here is a list of the magic words. Everyone should just put that list in an email and mass mail it out. Overload their system. Magic Words
OK...then cough up all the Fast and Furious e-mails.....
If this system worked, or even exists to the degree that is implied...
then why didn’t it catch the Boston Marathon bombers? After all, they must have looked at the AQ-sponsored website that described how to make a pressure cooker bomb.
The NSA knew that they went to Chechnya.
Just looked at the list of “Magic Words”...Mecca, Allah, Muhammed, nor Allahu Achbar are on it. So according to DHS, Islam must not be a threat.
Ah no its just de white man tryin ta take de black man down. All dis is lies I tell you...lies. Obama would never do dis to his own people.
Idiots. We tried to warn them. Our instincts were right when the hair on our necks went up but they refused to listen because they finally had their black champion, their first voice, in the white house who would pay back the white man. Now he has proven he’s the worst president in history and they cannot stand that we were right.
(HE never believed in personal privacy from the get go - so stated in the very beginning of his venture)
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/07/10/mark-zuckerberg-awarded-cia-surveillance-award/
This was a year ago.
Why is it news only now?
(I used to be an investigative reporter. Investigative reporters are not a dying breed - they are dead, long gone.
Now ‘reporters’ just report to their desks and wait for their talking points feed from their editor, who just got them from the WH.)
Looks like the Washington Post was instructed to front-run a scandal about to break by discrediting any claims of uninvolvement to me. Google I can believe, Facebook I can believe. But all of them? Not believable.
Like the orange drink Tang grew out of the space program, this is just one more spinoff from our dubious war on drugs but this spinoff could be poisonous.
When are we going to stop waging war against ourselves with ever more Star Wars weapons? We have already used drones, what's next, nuclear weapons? When will we finally decide that the war on drugs is killing our democracy and has already gone a long way toward killing our Constitution?
Up here in space
I’m looking down on you
My lasers trace
Everything you do
You think, you’ve private lives
Think nothing of the kind
There is no true escape
I’m watching all the time
I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I’m electric, electric spy
I’m protective, electric eye
Always in focus
You can’t feel my stare
I zoom into you
But you don’t know I’m there
I take a pride in probing
All your secret moves
My tearless retina takes
Pictures that can prove
I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I’m electric, electric spy
I’m protective, electric eye
Electric eye
In the sky
Feel my stare
Always there
There’s nothing you can do about it
Develop and expose
I feed upon your every thought
And so my power grows
I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I’m electric, electric spy
I’m protective, electric eye
I’m electric, electric spy
I’m electric, protective, detective, electric eye
Electric Eye, by Judas Priest.
“Bitch at the Congressional douche bags, not the NSA.”
That would be “Bitch at the DEMOCRAT Congressional douche bags.....” as THAT’s the year the Democrats took over Congress. Oh I’m sure there were some RINO’s involved in the “yays”, but they are Democrat’s incognito.
Protecting Your Privacy from Tools like RIOT and PRISM
http://tamarawilhite.hubpages.com/hub/Protecting-Your-Privacy-from-Tools-like-RIOT-Software
That kind of threat requires a big, mean government to carry out.
The very same big, mean government who would be looking at the data in the first place.
Government cannot and will not police itself - the only viable option is to constantly strive to keep it within Constitutional limits.
We can take an occasional terrorist attack - we can't take warrantless searches, unlimited blackmail of office-holders, and an unrestrained legal code which leads honest citizens to inadvertently commit an average of three felonies a day.
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