By Ali Al-Bassam
Impunity Watch Managing Editor, News
WASHINGTON D.C., United States — This week, news came to light that the National Surveillance Agency (NSA) had siphoned personal data from the main computer servers of nine major US internet providers, including Google and YouTube, and collected the phone records of millions of Verizon customers.
In an initiative code named PRISM, the FBI and NSA was granted access to “audio, video, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple company servers.” It was also reported that many companies did not know that the FBI and NSA had direct access to their servers. Google, Apple, Yahoo, and Facebook immediately denied that the government had direct access, while Microsoft said that it “did not voluntarily participate in any government data collection,” and only complied with specific requests.
The Guardian first reported that Microsoft was the first of the nine companies to participate in PRISM in December 2007. It reported that Yahoo then joined in 2008; Google, Facebook, and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally Apple last year.
It was also revealed earlier this week that the NSA had access to to Verizon customer phone records under a secret court order. Under this court order, labeled “Top Secret,” Verizon must disclose “all call detail records” of its customers to the NSA, including all local and long-distance calls within the US, and calls made between the US and overseas. This program and PRISM were initiated in 2007 during George W. Bush’s presidency.
President Obama, defended the surveillance program on Friday, saying that his administration struck “the right balance” between security and privacy, and that US citizens and residents were not being targeted. President Obama said that both NSA programs were repeatedly authorized by Congress and are subject to continual oversight by both congressional oversight committees and secret intelligence courts. Claiming to be skeptic about the NSA programs when he was sworn into office, President Obama said that it was necessary to preserve them for the sake of national security. “You can’t have 100% security, and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience,” said President Obama.
In a statement made late-night on Thursday, Director of National Intelligence Jams Clapper denounced the leaks, and said that “Americans would suffer.” “The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret US court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation,” said Clapper.
For further information, please see:
ABC — US Declassifies NSA Program Details After Uproar Over Verizon Phone Records — 7 June 2013
BBC News — Barack Obama Defends US Surveillance Tactics — 7 June 2013
The Independent — Obama Defends Spying Tactics of Prism Programme Mining Private Data from Google, Apple, YouTube, and Facebook — 7 June 2013
Policymic — NSA Phone Records: A Look at the Courts That let the Feds Tap our Phones — 7 June 2013
USA Today — NSA Taps Data from 9 Major Net Firms — 7 June 2013
Engadget — Washington Post: NSA, FBI Tapping Directly into Servers of 9 Leading Internet Companies (Updates) — 6 June 2013
Wall Street Journal — Government is Tracking Verizon Customers’ Records — 6 June 2013
