Big Brother is watching your every move! 1984 has arrived in America under the Liar-and-Thief! ~ The National Security Agency and FBI are interested in more than just your phone records — they are also interested in your audio, video, photographs, emails, documents, and connection logs, according to a bombshell report from The Washington Post. The massive Internet surveillance program, code-named “PRISM,” was started in 2007 and we are only now learning about it because an anonymous intelligence officer leaked the information to the press. “Firsthand experience with these systems, and horror at their capabilities, is what drove a career intelligence officer to provide PowerPoint slides about PRISM and supporting materials,” the report notes, “in order to expose what he believes to be a gross intrusion on privacy.” “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the officer said. But how, exactly, are the feds tapping directly into the central servers and getting their hands on online users’ information? With the assistance of major technology companies, of course: The technology companies, which participate knowingly in PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” For some of these companies, they had no choice but to comply with the feds. “Formally, in exchange for immunity from lawsuits, companies like Yahoo and AOL are obliged accept a ‘directive’ from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to open their servers to the FBI’s Data Intercept Technology Unit, which handles liaison to U.S. companies from the NSA,” the Post reports. “In 2008, Congress gave the Justice Department authority … for a secret order from the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court to compel a reluctant company ‘to comply,’” it adds. In short, the feds could simply strong-arm reluctant tech companies into playing along with the program. “In practice, there is room for a company to maneuver, delay or resist. When a clandestine intelligence program meets a highly regulated industry,” the report continues, “neither side wants to risk a public fight.” “The engineering problems are so immense, in systems of such complexity and frequent change, that the FBI and NSA would be hard pressed to build in back doors without active help from each company.” Microsoft became PRISM’s first corporate partner in 2007 while Apple didn’t join until five years later, after the death of Steve Jobs. Read on: theblaze/stories/2013/06/06/bombshell-report-govt-also-tapping-servers-of-top-internet-companies-to-collect-americans-emails-photos-messages/
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 23:58:16 +0000
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