• Tag Archives PRISM
  • RAND PAUL SPARS WITH CBS REPORTERS OVER GOV’T SURVEILLANCE: ‘JUST BECAUSE CONGRESS APPROVED IT, DOESN’T MAKE IT RIGHT’

    Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky isn’t afraid to disagree with his fellow Republicans — and he’s certainly not squeamish about debating with members of the American left or the media. During an exchange with CBS’s “This Morning,” the congressman went back-and-forth with hosts Charlie Rose, Norah O’Donnell and Gayle King about the ramifications of government surveillance.

    “I personally am trying to work within the law and change the law. I think that’s what my job is,” he said, declining to answer whether he views leaker Edward Snowden as a hero or a villain. “And I think we can jones the president on this, particularly his hypocrisy.”

    Rather than labeling the embattled 29-year-old in definitive terms, Paul said that he is reserving judgment (although he noted that the young man likely felt that coming forward with the information was the right thing to do in light of the government’s spying activity).

    When King asked about a recent Pew Research poll that found that the majority of Americans support the collection of phone records, the congressman said that the public would not be so supportive if they knew the full extent of the program’s ramifications.

    “Government has no right to this knowledge unless you’re accused of a crime, unless there’s probable cause,” he said, while going back and forth with the hosts.

    Full article: http://www.theblaze. … oesnt-make-it-right/


  • German government outraged by US snooping scandal

    The German government is demanding explanations from the US after it emerged that its secret spying programme Prism collected more information from Germany than any other EU country.

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to raise the issue when she receives US President Barack Obama in Berlin next week, her spokesman said on Monday (10 June).

    Data privacy is a very sensitive topic in Germany and the cluelessness of Merkel’s government about the affair may become an issue in September’s elections.

    “Everything we know we found out from the media,” interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said on Tuesday in a press conference in Berlin.

    Its head of domestic intelligence, Hans-Georg Maassen, standing beside Friedrich, added: “I knew nothing about it.”

    The ministry of interior is working on a questionnaire for the US government to find out the extent and the legal basis for the collection of data from Germany, he added.

    Similar information requests will be sent to Internet firms such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Apple, which were targeted by Prism, but which deny that US security staff got unlimited access to their servers.

    Germany’s hawkish interior minister – a Bavarian Christian-Social politician whose party is standing for re-election both on regional and national level in September – also indicated that US and German intelligence services co-operate well and that Prism might have “indirectly” helped Germany to prevent terrorist attacks.

    Meanwhile, German justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a Liberal politician, wrote in an op-ed for Spiegel Online that reports about Prism are “deeply worrying” and “dangerous.”

    She contradicted US leader Barack Obama, who recently said you cannot have 100 percent security and 100 percent privacy at the same time.

    “I do not share this view. A society is less free, the more its citizens are being surveilled, controlled and scrutinised. In a democratic system, security is not an end itself, but a means to ensure freedom,” she wrote.

    Full article: http://euobserver.com/justice/120455


  • NSA taps in to user data of Facebook, Google and others, secret files reveal

    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.

    In a statement, Google said: “Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data.”

    Several senior tech executives insisted that they had no knowledge of PRISM or of any similar scheme. They said they would never have been involved in such a program. “If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge,” one said.

    An Apple spokesman said it had “never heard” of PRISM.

    The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012.

    The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US.

    It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.

    Disclosure of the PRISM program follows a leak to the Guardian on Wednesday of a top-secret court order compelling telecoms provider Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of US customers.

    The participation of the internet companies in PRISM will add to the debate, ignited by the Verizon revelation, about the scale of surveillance by the intelligence services. Unlike the collection of those call records, this surveillance can include the content of communications and not just the metadata.

    Some of the world’s largest internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing program since its introduction in 2007. Microsoft – which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan “Your privacy is our priority” – was the first, with collection beginning in December 2007.

    It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally Apple, which joined the program in 2012. The program is continuing to expand, with other providers due to come online.

    Collectively, the companies cover the vast majority of online email, search, video and communications networks.

    Full article: http://www.guardian. … tech-giants-nsa-data