PRISM - Who else is disgusted by this?

[runam0k]

2005 says hello.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/politics/21nsa.html

Seriously, what do people think the NSA does?  What did Snowden think when he took the job?

[keelba]

What's really frustrating, more than anything I've read about this, is the fact that the majority of Americans are OK with it. I wish I could find the article I read this morning, but it stated that 60% of Americans have no problem with what the NSA is doing because they feel safer knowing they're using it to stop terrorism.

[herzmeister]

do not trust statistics you didn't forge yourself 

[rumbitla]

The US should be cut off from the European internet.

Let them have their own internet protected by the Great Firewall of America, similar to what the Chinese do with their Great Firewall of China.

"The Golden Shield Project (Chinese: 金盾工程; pinyin: jīndùn gōngchéng), colloquially referred to as the Great Firewall of China[1] (防火长城) is a censorship and surveillance project operated by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) division of the government of the People's Republic of China. The project was initiated in 1998 and began operations in November 2003." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall_of_China )

[RoadToHell]

do not trust statistics you didn't forge yourself 

ding ding!  The poll question was probably something like "When it comes to known baby-killing terrorists, should the government track their phone and internet activity?"

[aigeezer]

American satirist Andy Borowitz has tackled the topic: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/06/useful-phrases-for-the-surveillance-state.html

[zackclark70]

I tried to search more on this and my browser crashed. Im scared.

same hapend to me

[dwdoc]

Connection between PRISM revelations and bitcoin:

http://www.coindesk.com/prisms-effect-on-bitcoin-prices/

[escrow.ms]

The US should be cut off from the European internet.

Not possible, untill american govt wants that and i don't think they will ever do that.
they want to monitor whole world.

[Lethn]

do not trust statistics you didn't forge yourself  

ding ding!  The poll question was probably something like "When it comes to known baby-killing terrorists, should the government track their phone and internet activity?"

You also have to take into account when these morons use percentages is what the percentage is out of, I'm shit at percentages and this is the most classic trick they use, they'll usually take a poll of about 1000 people or something and then claim it's 'everybody' or in this case 'A percentage of all Americans' chances are most people are as outraged as you and the media is just trying to smooth it over.

[bassclef]

[LeTanque]

VPN, Bitcoin, Tor, PGP. 

This is the world we live in and those are the tools you have to fight back.

[keelba]

VPN, Bitcoin, Tor, PGP. 

This is the world we live in and those are the tools you have to fight back.

Don't forget Ghostery http://www.ghostery.com/download to stop cookies from tracking.

Maybe we should have a separate thread with all the ways to protect oneself and how they work.

[wdmw]

If you live in a city or apartment building, change your wireless network name to NSA.gov

[FoBoT]

https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline
1791-2013
they did skip the Alien and Sedition Acts and  Andrew Jackson's tyranny

if you think G Bush or B Obama started this garbage, read up on it man

[gollum]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

So much irony here posting this on the internet for others to see. I am disgusted. This year is 2013, next year will be 1984.

We must assume that governments everywhere are spying on us as much as they can afford. The only real solution is awareness of the spying and encryption to protect the communication. The easiest solution is communicating offline as much as possible, or using PGP and bitmessage online.

[Seth Otterstad]

There are two NSA monitoring programs reported on.  One collects metadata on phone calls in the US, and the other one, called PRISM, gives access to email and other data at companies like Google.  Initially this sounds bad, but these programs appear to be legal.  The phone-monitoring program cannot listen in on your call without a warrant, but they can see who you called and when.  This program has been reported on for a long time, and collecting this metadata has been legal since 1979.  The other program, PRISM, does not target US citizens, who are protected by the constitution from unreasonable searches.  PRISM collects data of "non-US persons", particularly those in Iran and Pakistan.  These programs have congressional and judicial oversight.  

The uproar seems to be about the possibility that this monitoring program could be turned on US citizens, whether the NSA should be able to collect metadata, and whether the agency is filtering out US data appropriately since Snowden's leak shows that about 3% of the data collected is from the US.  Leaking secret documents about perfectly legal government programs overseen by elected congressmen makes Edward Snowden a traitor, unless we find his claim that the NSA is lying is correct.  There will certainly be an inquiry to find out the truth.

I think the whole argument is stupid.  Everyone knows that information you put online is not private.  Making sure the NSA can't legally access it doesn't fix anything.  There are still any number of corporations, foreign governments, and individual attackers with access who don't care about your privacy.  People who are actually concerned about their privacy encrypt their data.  Which is no one.  Privacy is over because no one cares.

I wrote a blog post about it.  Let me know what you think!
http://sethotterstad.quora.com/Edward-Snowden-is-a-Traitor-but-a-marginal-one

[Kinetic915]

I'd hoped never to see it confirmed, but it's a US problem only I hope:

Documents leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden[6] in June 2013 describe the PRISM program 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 web content of people outside the United States. Data which 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.[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

I would say it is more targeted at non-US citizens.

According to John Oliver on the Daily Show the system that assesses the target's level of "foreignness" is accurate up to 51%.  Thats a 49% margin of error.  A flip of the coin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PCEnkynRuI

[Kinetic915]

“There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal, and that is to destroy privacy and anonymity, not just in the United States but around the world,” said Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter speaking on CNN. “That is not hyperbole. That is their objective.”

Absolutely terrifying.  I know this does not solely stem from the Obama Administration, but it is disheartening to see Obama defends PRISM when the overlying slogan of his campaign was governmental transparency....

[Korbman]

It seems I'm one of the few that realizes PRISM, in all its shapes and forms, is nothing new..and as a result, I'm not shocked by it in the least.

"Modern" spying..whether on domestic or foreign persons..has been around for a number of decades (perhaps much longer), though obviously not on this scale. As technology got more advanced, it became easier and easier for "acronym agencies" to collect and analyze data. It was only a matter of time before something of this magnitude was uncovered.