by KIM ZETTER
Wired
As if news of the National Security Agency collecting phone records on millions of Americans wasn’t enough, a new report reveals that the NSA and FBI are directly tapped into central servers at nine U.S. internet firms, in order to provide constant monitoring of audio, video, photos, emails and documents as well as connection logs.
The companies whose servers are being mined are reportedly Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. The classified program, dubbed PRISM, has been in operation since 2007 and has been a leading source of intelligence fed to the president in his daily intelligence briefings, according to theWashington Post, which broke the story at the same time as the Guardian today.
The Post notes that PalTalk hosted significant traffic during the Arab Spring and during the ongoing Syrian civil war.
Microsoft was the first to cave into the requests in 2007, though Apple resisted for five years before joining the club last year.
Dropbox is on the government’s wishlist for other servers in its sights. Presentation slides describing the program indicate that surveillance of Dropbox is “coming soon,” according to the Post, which says the companies have been given immunity from lawsuits through a directive signed by the attorney general and the director of national intelligence.
But according to the Guardian the companies are unaware the program exists and are not cooperating. Several who responded to a Guardian request for comment denied knowledge of the program.
Filed under: Apple, Corporations, Google, Police State/Big Brother USA, Science & Technology, Surveillance, The Web, USA
