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US Mining Data Directly From 9 Silicon Valley Companies

Posted by samzenpus on from the open-book dept.

Rick Zeman writes "Hot on the heels of Verizon's massive data dump to NSA comes news of 'PRISM' where The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time. This program, established in 2007, includes major companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook...and more."

2 of 404 comments (clear)

  1. Is I also said on Ars... by GrahamCox · · Score: 5, Informative

    If this doesn't make you angry, upset and outraged, what will? Most of you will have relatives that fought and died to fight the evil of fascism in the Second World War. What was that all about, if you are just allowing the same thing on your own doorstep by stealth? Don't tell me about Godwin's Law, that's just a way to stifle debate. Call out this fascism for what it is. This is beyond the wildest dreams of the STASI or Stalin, because they didn't have the technology. The NSA and the CIA are rogue states within the state, they are beyond control and are not acting for you, or in your best interests. This should upset you. If there are not huge, mass protests on the streets of your state capitols all over the nation in the coming weeks, you should be ashamed of yourselves. The Orwellian state is not inevitable, but it takes actual action to stop this. Cynical tut-tutting will not do. This has to be shut down now, and proper protest is what it's going to take. Over to you.

  2. Re:land of the free... by tirefire · · Score: 5, Informative

    to CONVENIENTLY send and receive pgp-encrypted gmail that prevents plaintext from ever reaching Google's servers.

    I thought Gmail was free because Google's robots scanned the contents of your emails to determine what advertisements to display next to your inbox. If Google can't read your email, they could only show users random advertisements, or maybe ask them to complete some questionnaire to tick off their interests.

    Either way, I think Google makes less money if they can't read people's Gmail messages, so I doubt we'll see it.