An NSA and FBI intelligence program, code-named PRISM, has been exposed, along with nine major US internet and social media companies, to be involved in one of the largest and most expansive government data mining operations to date.
PRISM, the highly classified data gathering operation, was revealed to the public for the first time Thursday after slides from an internal NSA briefing were leaked to the press. This comes after recent reports that of secret NSA requests for Verizon customer data.
Some of the important points of information revealed in the leaked PRISM slides:
The NSA and FBI intended to develop a program that would track internet traffic and communication of a highly varied nature. This includes status updates, private emails, instant messages, texts, uploaded videos, and much more.
Businesses listed among those involved in Special Source Operations, the designation for private companies working in cooperation with intelligence agencies and programs, included Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, and last October, Apple. Dropbox has been described as “coming soon.”
Yahoo and AOL were noted to have requested, in order to gain immunity from lawsuits, directives from the government requiring their cooperation with the NSA and FBI.
The Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court, since gaining Congressional approval in 2008, has been issuing these orders for businesses to comply with intelligence requests.
Apple was described, in uncertain terms, as having resisted government directives for at least five years, until submitting in 2012. It was also notable that Twitter appeared absent from the companies cooperating with PRISM.
The top-secret program began in 2007 under President Bush and has expanded under Obama in the years since. PRISM, as it is today, is a significant tool in NSA intelligence operations, now responsible for generating 1,744 reports last year, or one in seven intelligence reports in the US.
[Image via Wikipedia / National Security Agency ]