What The Government Knows About You 06-08-2013, 11:51 AM
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![[Image: NSA.jpg?8c1f6e]](http://sourcefednews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/NSA.jpg?8c1f6e)
Thanks to the Guardian and The Washington Post we know exactly what the government has been doing, and what they might know about us.
The Washington Post and Guardian dropped their bombshell reports regarding PRISM, a covert collaboration between the NSA, FBI, and almost every tech company utilized by the American public.
PRISM allowed the goverment nearly limitless access to your personal information and it’s been going on for at least 6 years.
The program that sounds like it’s straight out of any conspiracy theorists 101 handbook went into effect in 2007 and has only gained momentum since it’s inception. Its stated purpose is to monitor potentially valuable foreign communique that may pass through US servers.
However, in practice appears to have a much larger scope than just monitoring foreign correspondence.
PRISM gave the NSA unprecedented access to the servers of major tech companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, AOL, Skype, and Yahoo. Any interaction you have had with these companies in the past six years has been available to the government.
The companies mentioned above received a directive from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. They hand over access to their servers to the FBI’s Data Intercept Technology Unit, which in turn relays it to the NSA.
PRISM information accounts for staggering 1 in 7 intelligence reports.
What’s most troubling about PRISM isn’t that it collects data. It’s the type of data it collects. According to the Washington Post report, that includes:
Quote:…audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs… [Skype] can be monitored for audio when one end of the call is a conventional telephone, and for any combination of “audio, video, chat, and file transfers” when Skype users connect by computer alone. Google’s offerings include Gmail, voice and video chat, Google Drive files, photo libraries, and live surveillance of search terms.
Essentially they could pull up every interaction you’ve ever had with anyone or anything you’ve ever done online.
Most of the tech companies involved have cooperative with the injunction, starting with Micrsoft who reportedly signed on in 2007. However some companies, Like Twitter for example, have not complied.
PRISM’s first corporate partner was allegedly Microsoft, which according to the Post and Guardian signed on back in 2007. Other companies slowly joined, with Apple being the most recent enlistee. Twitter, it seems, has not complied.
Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google have all denied any involvement whatsoever.
PRISM is, shockingly, legal. The government has had this authority for years, and there’s no sign that it’s going to be revoked any time soon.
The Protect America Act of 2007 made it possible for targets to be electronically surveilled without a warrant if they were “reasonably believed” to be foreign.
PRISM abuses this loophole by using a single filter that checks for anything “foreign” in the subject. It eliminates 49% of the data, leaving more than half, legally with the government.
Question:
Now that you know who and what is monitoring you, are you going to change any of your online habits? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments down below!
Source(s): youtube.com/SourceFed