Glenn Greenwald and Ewan Mcaskill break huge stories about NSA surveillance of American phone calls and virtually unlimited access by NSA to every major computer server in the US.
There are no words for this. Months of hints from some Democratic legislators on various intelligence committees that unprecedented levels of surveillance were being implemented cracked wide open with this week’s scoops by Greenwald and Mcaskill in the London Guardian newspaper of NSA paperwork revealing agreements with Verizon to turn over wireless meta data and every major computer company including Google, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft to permit National Security Agency access to their data servers.
Denials by Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and Facebook have been made of “direct Access” to their servers via Prism. Several people have suggested that the server access can likely be characterized as indirect, consisting of a parallel NSA server on the premises with data links. This was the protocol followed by AT*T in the 2006 surveillance program. Twitter appears to have refused to participate in the Prism program to date.
The whistleblower inside the National Security Administration has identified himself as Edward Snowden, a 29 year-old contractor employed by Booz Hamilton at NSA offices. He is currently in Hong Kong.
Read the stories here:
Prism Program Grants NSA Access to Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo Servers
Cyber Attacks and The Militarization of the Internet
The Boundless Informant Catalogs Surveillance Data
NSA Whistleblower is 29 year old Edward Snowden
Taking Stock of Prism, Partisanship and Propaganda
Rules That Allow NSA to USE US Data Without A Warrant
X-Keyscore: NSA Tool Collects “Nearly Everything A User Does On The Internet
And this one calls for more than that, if you ask us. Federal building camp-out, anyone?
Video interview with Snowden below