OBAMA: TRADING FREEDOM & PRIVACY FOR SECURITY,
BUT "NOT SUSPICIOUS":
OBAMA: "NOBODY IS LISTENING TO YOUR TELEPHONE CALLS (OR CONTENTS),
JUST "SIFTING THROUGH 'METADATA'":
The New American reports that the Washington Post learned of "Prism" one day after the UK Guardian released their story about Verizon handing over millions of telephone records to the National Security Agency (NSA).
See: http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/15643-nsa-mining-data-of-nine-internet-companies-post-reports,
Quote: "The secret program, called PRISM, has been in operation since 2007, but has not been disclosed publicly before, the Post said. A career intelligence officer provided PowerPoint slides and supporting materials to the paper to expose the massive invasion of privacy. "They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type," the officer said.
The companies participating in the program include most of the big names in the telecommunications industry — Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. The program has grown out of a history of alliances between U.S. intelligence agencies and as many as 100 U.S. companies since the 1970s, the Post reports. PRISM works in conjunction with another top-secret program, called BLARNEY, which, according to the program's summary, "leverages IC [intelligence community] and commercial partnerships to gain access and exploit foreign intelligence obtained from global networks."
See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html.
