by Fox Van Allen for Techlicious
NSA Email, Search and File Transfer Snooping Exposed
According to recent news reports, the National Security Agency has spent the last several years monitoring emails, search activity and file transfers of Americans – through the cooperation of tech giants like Microsoft, Apple and Google.–PC Pitstop.
Verizon may very well just be the tip of the iceberg. Just hours after U.K. news organization The Guardian revealed that the FBI was collecting millions of private citizens’ phone data, numerous members of the United States government have revealed that data collection efforts are far broader, and have been going on for far longer, than was immediately reported.
On Wednesday, The Guardian reprinted a classified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court document, dated April 25, 2013, that demands Verizon turn over customers’ phone records “on an ongoing daily basis” through July 19, 2013. The court document also demands absolute secrecy pertaining to the order.
And now, it gets worse: It was also revealed he government has backdoors into virtually every major Internet company’s data servers, where it can obtain information it views as vital to national security without need of a warrant.
Government eyes are literally everywhere online.
According to a confidential document leaked to The Guardian, the National Security Agency (NSA) has created a program named PRISM that has given it unfettered access to the databases of virtually every major company that stores your data.
In a document leaked to The Guardian, specific companies involved in offering the government access to your data are named. Feds have had access to Microsoft’s data since September 2007, Yahoo since March 2008, Google since January 2009, Facebook since June 2009, YouTube since September 2010, Skype since February 2011, AOL since March 2011, and Apple since just last October. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google have all denied claims that the government has direct access to their data servers.
Obviously, because of the sheer amount of data being collected and sifted through, it’s unlikely a human being in Washington, D.C. will ever lay eyes on any of your old deleted Xanga blog, pictures of your 7th grade trip to Philadelphia, or emails about a secret love affair. Unless, of course, someone decides that those records pertain to national security, in which case the government can legally seek information first and ask permission later.
This excerpt appears with the permission of Techlicious.
PC Pitstop Notes:
How to use the Internet without all those PRISM-accused Web properties | DigitalTrends.com | By Francis Bea — June 13, 2013
