PRISM

PRISM is claimed to be a Top Secret electronic surveillance program run by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) since 2007. Reports based on leaked documents state that the PRISM program is described as enabling in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. It provides for the targeting of any customers of participating corporations who live outside the United States, or American citizens whose communications include people outside the USA. Data that the NSA is able to obtain under PRISM allegedly includes email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice over IP conversations, file transfers, login notifications and social networking details.

The Washington Post noted that the leaked document indicated that PRISM is "the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports."

The leaked information came to light just one day after the revelation that the U.S. government had secretly been requiring the telecommunications company Verizon to turn over to the NSA on an ongoing, daily basis logs tracking all of all of its customers' telephone calls.

History
PRISM replaced the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which was implemented in the wake of the September 11 attacks under the George W. Bush Administration. While the Terrorist Surveillance Program was widely criticized and had its legality questioned because it was not conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,   PRISM was authorized by an order of the Court. The NSA continued to operate PRISM throughout the Obama Administration.

PRISM was first publicly revealed on June 6, 2013, after classified documents about the program were leaked to the Washington Post and The Guardian. The documents identified several technology companies as participants in the PRISM program, including (date of joining PRISM in parentheses) Microsoft (2007), Yahoo (2008), Google (2009), Facebook (2009), Paltalk (2009), YouTube (2010), AOL (2011), Skype (2011), and Apple (2012). The speaker's notes in the briefing document reviewed by the Washington Post indicated that "98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google and Microsoft."

The documents included a slide presentation stating that much of the world's electronic communications pass through the United States because electronic communications data will tend to follow the least expensive route rather than the physically most direct route and the bulk of the world's internet infrastructure is based in the U.S. The presentation noted that these facts provide U.S. intelligence analysts with opportunities for intercepting the communications of foreign targets as their electronic data pass into or through the U.S.

Former employees of the National Security Agency have added further information :

In an interview on ABC News in January 2006 NSA Whistleblower Russ Tice has stated "...the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used. That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum,"

In an interview on RT in December 2012 NSA Whistleblower William Binney had stated "...the FBI has access to the data collected, which is basically the emails of virtually everybody in the country. And the FBI has access to it. All the congressional members are on the surveillance too, no one is excluded. They are all included. So, yes, this can happen to anyone. If they become a target for whatever reason – they are targeted by the government, the government can go in, or the FBI, or other agencies of the government, they can go into their database, pull all that data collected on them over the years, and we analyze it all. So, we have to actively analyze everything they’ve done for the last 10 years at least." On June 6, 2013 he estimated that the NSA also collects records on 3 billion calls per day

In an interview to Democracy Now! on June 6, 2013, NSA Whitleblower Thomas Drake has stated "...This is routine. These are routine orders. This is nothing new. What’s new is we’re actually seeing an actual order. And people are somehow surprised by it. The fact remains that this program has been in place for quite some time. It was actually started shortly after 9/11. The PATRIOT Act was the enabling mechanism that allowed the United States government in secret to acquire subscriber records of—from any company that exists in the United States."

Response from companies
Companies implicated as participants in PRISM strongly distanced themselves from the program. Several corporate executives told The Guardian that they had no knowledge of PRISM or anything like it, and said that they would never have cooperated with such a program. Statements of several of the companies named in the leaked documents were reported by TechCrunch as follows:

Facebook– "We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law."

Google– "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 backdoor for the government to access private user data."

Apple– "We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order."

Microsoft– "We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don't participate in it."

Yahoo! – "Yahoo! takes users' privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network."

Dropbox– "We've seen reports that Dropbox might be asked to participate in a government program called PRISM. We are not part of any such program and remain committed to protecting our users' privacy."

In response to the technology companies' denials of the NSA being able to directly access the companies' servers, the New York Times reported that sources had stated the NSA was gathering the surveillance data from the companies using other technical means in response to court orders for specific sets of data. The Washington Post suggested, "It is possible that the conflict between the PRISM slides and the company spokesmen is the result of imprecision on the part of the NSA author. In another classified report obtained by The Post, the arrangement is described as allowing 'collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,' rather than directly to company servers."

Response from U.S. government
Shortly after publication of the reports by the Guardian and the Washington Post, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, released a statement confirming that for nearly 6 years the government of the United States had been using large internet services companies such as Google and Facebook to collect information on foreigners outside the U.S. as a defense against national security threats. The statement read in part, "The Guardian and The Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They contain numerous inaccuracies." He went on to say, "Section 702 is a provision of FISA that is designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States. It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States."

Clapper concluded his statement by asserting, "The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans."

External links and further reading

 * "NSA collected US email records in bulk for more than two years under Obama" article by Glenn Greenwald and Spencer Ackerman in The Guardian, Thursday 27 June 2013

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