NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily | World news The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries. The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing. The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19. The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual.
Apple, Google, Microsoft and 6 other companies reportedly feeding NSA, FBI info through data sharing pact [Updated] Today the Washington Post reported that through a $20 million program known as PRISM, a number of US-based Internet companies have allowed the US government to tap “directly into [their] central servers.” Companies that are said to be participating knowingly include: Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, AOL, PalTalk, with Dropbox tipped to be coming up next. To call this a painfully disgraceful flaunting of user privacy would be understatement. This breaking information follows news first reported by the Guardian of a massive, pervasive spying effort by the US government on the calling data of its own citizens. Update: NBC News has confirmed from two sources that the PRISM program exists. According to the Washington Post, Microsoft is listed as the first firm to take part in PRISM. Photo via Matthew Keys To be clear, it appears that the complicity of each company involved varies, and the Post suggests that Apple resisted most. What information is the US government accessing?
NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others | World news The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian. The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says. The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers. Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program. An Apple spokesman said it had "never heard" of Prism.
NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program Through a PRISM darkly: Tracking the ongoing NSA surveillance story It was a relatively quiet week for internet news until Guardian blogger Glenn Greenwald dropped a bombshell on Thursday, with a story that showed the National Security Agency was collecting data from Verizon thanks to a secret court order. But that was just the beginning: the Washington Post later revealed an even broader program of surveillance code-named PRISM, which involved data collection from the web’s largest players — including Google, Facebook and Apple — and then the Wall Street Journal said data is also being gathered from ISPs and credit-card companies. This story is moving so quickly that it is hard to keep a handle on all of the developments, not to mention trying to follow the denials and non-denials from those who are allegedly involved, and the threads that tie this particular story to the long and sordid history of the U.S. government’s surveillance of its own citizens. The Guardian leak The leak widens The Washington Post leak The ongoing fallout Zuckerberg denial
Le FBI a accès aux serveurs des géants d'Internet Le scandale Verizon, qui a éclaté après les révélations du Guardian sur la saisie automatique des centaines de millions de données téléphoniques de citoyens américains, pourrait bien constituer la première étape d'une série de révélations sur les pratiques d'espionnage des communications opérées dans le plus grand secret par l'Etat américain. Le quotidien britannique affirme, en effet, dans son édition de vendredi 7 juin, que l'Agence nationale de sécurité américaine (NSA) et le FBI ont ainsi accès aux serveurs de neuf géants américains de l'Internet, dont Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google et Facebook, pour y surveiller les activités d'étrangers. Le quotidien américain The Washington Post publie des documents sur ce programme secret, fournis par un ancien employé du renseignement. Ces documents, dont une présentation PowerPoint, expliquent le partenariat entre l'agence d'espionnage NSA et les sociétés Internet. A lire : "Scandale Verizon : Washington défend la saisie de millions de données"
Justice Department Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance In the midst of revelations that the government has conducted extensive top-secret surveillance operations to collect domestic phone records and internet communications , the Justice Department was due to file a court motion Friday in its effort to keep secret an 86-page court opinion that determined that the government had violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying. This important case—all the more relevant in the wake of this week's disclosures—was triggered after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate intelligence committee, started crying foul in 2011 about US government snooping. As a member of the intelligence committee, he had learned about domestic surveillance activity affecting American citizens that he believed was improper. He and Sen. For those who follow the secret and often complex world of high-tech government spying, this was an aha moment. It took the Justice Department four months to reply.
Revealed: how Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages | World news Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian. The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month. The documents show that: • 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.com portal; • The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail; • Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a "team sport".
White House Defends Phone-Record Tracking as 'Critical Tool' WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency's monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency's activities. The disclosure this week of an order by a secret U.S. court for Verizon Communications Inc. VZ -0.35 % 's phone records set off the latest public discussion of the program. But people familiar with the NSA's operations said the initiative also encompasses phone-call data from AT&T Inc. T -0.45 % and Sprint Nextel Corp. The agency is using its secret access to the communications of millions of Americans to target possible terrorists, said people familiar with the effort. The NSA's efforts have become institutionalized—yet not so well known to the public—under laws passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Civil-liberties advocates slammed the NSA's actions. But Sen. Sen.
Secret program gives NSA, FBI backdoor access to Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft data The US National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation have been harvesting data such as audio, video, photographs, emails, and documents from the internal servers of nine major technology companies, according to a leaked 41-slide security presentation obtained by The Washington Post and The Guardian. According to The Washington Post, the program's slides were provided by a "career intelligence officer" that had "firsthand experience with these systems, and horror at their capabilities," and wished to expose the program's "gross intrusion on privacy." The program, codenamed PRISM, is considered highly classified and has never been made public before. The list of companies involved are the who's who of Silicon Valley: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. Dropbox, though not yet an official part of the program, is said to be joining it soon. The who's who of Silicon Valley are involved in the NSA's PRISM program
Officials: NSA mistakenly intercepted emails, phone calls of innocent Americans As President Obama defends government information mining programs, many questions rise to the surface about the nature of the program and the way the information is used. Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA counter terror chief, discusses his experience with counter-terrorism efforts and how FISA was born and grew. By Michael Isikoff National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News The National Security Agency has at times mistakenly intercepted the private email messages and phone calls of Americans who had no link to terrorism, requiring Justice Department officials to report the errors to a secret national security court and destroy the data, according to two former U.S. intelligence officials. At least some of the phone calls and emails were pulled from among the hundreds of millions stored by telecommunications companies as part of an NSA surveillance program. Ret. The judges “were really upset about this,” said the former official. Related story More from Open Channel:
MATRIX – Ce que nos données Gmail révèlent de notre vie sociale Que contiennent les métadonnées transmises par Google à la National Security Agency (NSA) américaine ou celles qu’observe en France la Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE) ? Les métadonnées sont l’enveloppe d’une donnée, son contenant. Dans le cadre d’une conversation téléphonique, ce seront par exemple les fadettes, les factures détaillées des appels émis et reçus et les numéros contactés, mais pas le contenu de la conversation. Dans le cas d’un courrier électronique, ce sera le nom et l’adresse de la personne à qui l’on écrit, le volume de courriers envoyés et reçus, etc. L’accès à ces données techniques constitue-t-il de l’espionnage ? C’est tout le débat depuis que l’ampleur de la collecte de données par les autorités américaines a été révélé, il y a quelques semaines, par l’ancien consultant de la NSA Edward Snowden. >> Lire la tribune cosignée par César Hidalgo parue dans Le Monde daté du 27 juin : « Il est temps de parler des métadonnées«
Doublespeak Denials Of PRISM Hid The Truth About Participation “Direct Access” didn’t mean no access. “Back door” didn’t mean no door. “Only in accordance with the law” didn’t mean PRISM is illegal. And you didn’t need to have heard of a codename to have participated. Larry, Zuck, you didn’t spell out your denials of the NSA’s data spying program in plain English, and now we know why. [Update: This article and its headline have been edited, see explanation below.] The New York Times says you knowingly participated in the NSA’s data monitoring program. But you were probably cornered by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act restrictions about what you could say about PRISM. Sadly, you really were working with the NSA to give it access to our private data, so your supposedly candid statements full of technicalities just broke our hearts, as the truth has come to light. The terms you used disguised what was going on. Now these excuses ring hollow. That’s a threat to your business, and our way of life. [Image Credit]