You are here: Home > Top Secret Snowden Files Reveal NSA Access to Skype, Outlook and More Top Secret Snowden Files Reveal NSA Access to Skype, Outlook and More.. A lot of people are beginning to realize, albeit slowly, that many people in our country, have been asleep. We call them sheeple, because they are a lot like sheep. Amazingly, amid all the scandals rocking the Obama administration just since his reelection, there are still many people not only asleep, but apparently in a coma. These people are the ones who seemingly know nothing about anything of newsworthy import, and yet can usually tell you exactly what is going on with their favorite celebrities, sports teams and intricate details about anything within their close circle of friends. All the while, even those of us who ARE awake and who ARE paying attention, and who ARE trying to wake others up, are indeed also having the wool pulled over our eyes. It was only days ago that James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, apologized for telling Congress earlier this year that the National Security Agency does not collect data on millions of Americans. Clapper now calls his previous remarks “clearly erroneous”, in a letter posted on his website, sent to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein. In the letter, he claims to have misunderstood the question. Does that ring a bell? How many times, from Hillary Clinton with Benghazi, to Lois Lerner with the IRS, and now Clapper with NSA, are we supposed to buy this “my dog ate my homework” excuse? Yet many are still asleep and still in a coma and all of us feel the proverbial wool being pulled over our eyes by this administration. The mere fact that it has taken Edward Snowden, a contract employee at the NSA, to be the one to expose what is really going on with the NSA and the extent of the blatant spying, eavesdropping and snooping allegedly going on by the government–all in direct opposition to the 4th Amendment–is a disgrace. Snowden has said he was planning his leaks for about a year. Now we have learned as of Friday, from documents published by the UK Guardian, obtained from Snowden, that it goes beyond even what we learned previously. Snowden’s documents, obtained by the Guardian, show that Microsoft gave the NSA easy access to encrypted web chats, Skype video calls and messages, and Microsoft’s Cloud storage services. The top secret documents expose what has occurred over the last three years: • Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook portal; • The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook, including Hotmail; • The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide; • Microsoft also worked with the FBI’s Data Intercept Unit to “understand” potential issues with a feature in Outlook that allows users to create email aliases; • In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism; • Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a “team sport”. All of this is disturbing and unprecedented, and yet, not really surprising to those of us who have been awake. Remember, last year, Wired issued a report stating National Security Agency surveillance enabled by the FAA was found “unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment” by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “on at least one occasion.” The court also found that the government’s implementation of its authority under the statute had “circumvented the spirit of the law.” As reported a year ago by Policymic, despite these troubling rulings from a court notorious for its deference to intelligence agencies, Congress was so unconcerned that lawmakers didn’t even want to know how many citizens were caught up in the NSA’s vast and growing databases. According to last year’s Policymic article, these facts were given in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden, from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which had approved Wyden’s request for declassification of small bits of information about secret FISA Court rulings. Wyden was told he would be allowed to say the following—and only the following publicly: • A (then) recent unclassified report noted that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has repeatedly held that collection carried out pursuant to the FISA Section 702 minimization procedures used by the government is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. • It is also true that, on at least one occasion, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held that some collection carried out pursuant to the Section 702 minimization procedures used by the government was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. • I believe that the government’s implementation of Section 702 of FISA has sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law, and on at least one occasion the FISA Court has reached this same conclusion. Even for those of us vigilantly paying attention, this information was so far buried in the world of Mainstream Media News that virtually no one paid any attention to it, and yet, it was simply the tip of the iceberg we now see awkwardly and blatantly sticking out of the sea of scandals and corruption known as the Obama administration; and it’s growing by the minute.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 01:47:16 +0000
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