The internet is aflame with the news that the National Security Agency
may be spying on phone calls and internet access of American citizens,
and the possibility that they've partnered with some of the biggest tech
companies in the world—Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Skype, and
others—to request and access data directly whenever they want it. Let's
take a look at what exactly is going on, how long it's been happening,
and what—if anything—you can do about it.
Defenders of online liberty and generally angry internet people Anonymous
have leaked a treasure trove of NSA documents, including seriously
important stuff like the US Department of Defense’s ‘Strategic Vision’
for controlling the internet.
The documents — 13 in total — were
posted online, along with an
accompanying message
full of the normal Anonymous bluster:
people won’t be silenced, they
have the memory of trivia-master elephants, the governments of the world
will fall, your average press release really.
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The
documents seem to mostly relate to PRISM and supporting operations, and
mostly date from around
2008, supposedly not long after PRISM first
reared its ugly head. One of the key things Anonymous has highlighted
from the documents is the existence of an “intelligence-sharing network”
that shares data gleaned from PRISM with “intelligence partners” around
the world. Although we’re still in the process of combing through the
documents, you can bet your last Bitcoin that ‘intelligence’ has been
shared with British security services.
James
Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, basically confirmed the
Washington Post and Guardian report about how the NSA can pry data from
Apple, Facebook, Google and whoever else.
Here's what Clapper wrote about PRISM:
The Guardian and The Washington Post articles refer
to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act. They contain numerous inaccuracies.
Section 702 is a provision of FISA that is designed to facilitate the
acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S.
persons located outside the United States. It cannot be used to
intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone
located within the United States.
Activities authorized by Section 702 are subject to oversight by the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive Branch, and
Congress. They involve extensive procedures, specifically approved by
the court, to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are
targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination
of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons.
Section 702 was recently reauthorized by Congress after extensive hearings and debate.
Information collected under this program is among the most important
and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to
protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.
The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and
entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections
for the security of Americans.
Okay.
Translation: hey, we're doing this because it's all totally legal! And
that there are a lot of procedures to get stuff like this done so don't
worry! And it's all a secret! And that revealing that we've had access
to data from bigwig Internet companies is an awful thing to do!
Basically, trust us to keep you safe even if it means we're completely
untrustworthy. Ha.
[Big Thank to Gizmodo]
Chrome/Firefox/Safari: Boomerang, a popular browser extension for Gmail users, schedules your messages to be sent at a later time or reappear in your inbox at some point in the future. For awhile, you had to use a "manage page" to edit and scheduled items, but now you can do that directly from the message itself in Gmail.
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