Quote:One day after The Guardian revealed that the U.S. government has been secretly collecting call log data from millions of Verizon customers, The Washington Post reported Thursday that the government’s monitoring of American’s data goes much, much deeper. The FBI and the National Security Agency are mining the servers of the country’s biggest technology companies for the purpose of hunting spies and terrorists. The program, code-named PRISM, is massive in scope and involves web services that many Americans use every day.

To make all this shadowy surveillance easier to digest, here are the relevant data points about the massive data collection:

(MORE: 7 Things to Know About the Government’s Secret Database of Telephone Data)

9

The number of tech companies involved in the PRISM program. Here’s a list, from an NSA slideshow, including the date when monitoring began:

Microsoft (September 2007)
Yahoo (March 2008)
Google (January 2009)
Facebook (June 2009)
PalTalk (December 2009)
YouTube (September 2010)
Skype (February 2011)
AOL (March 2011)
Apple (October 2012)
So far Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo have flatly denied that they provide the government backdoor access to their services, according to a variety of news sources. Twitter, which says it has been particularly vigilant in protecting user data from government agencies, is notably absent from the list. Dropbox is next in line to be added to PRISM, according to the Post.

10

The number of different types of data that are collected through PRISM. E-mails, instant messages, videos, photos, stored data (likely items stored on cloud services like Google Drive), voice chats, file transfers, video conferences, log-in times, and social network profile details have all been monitored by the government. Through PRISM NSA officials can even conduct live surveillance of someone doing a Google search, according to the Post.

(MORE: The NSA Snooping Scoop: Behind the Guardian‘s Risky Plans for Global Expansion)

$20 million

The annual cost of PRISM, according to NSA documents obtained by the Post

2007

The year PRISM was established. The Post describes an “exponential growth” in the program since President Obama took office. The government has snooped on other forms of communication in recent years as well. On Thursday, Senator Dianne Feinstein confirmed that the NSA phone log database has been in place for at least seven years.

1,477

The number of times PRISM data was cited in 2012 as part of President Obama’s daily briefing, a high-level intelligence presentation given to the president, the vice president and select cabinet members. According to the Post, at least 1 in 7 intelligence reports from the NSA make use of PRISM data.

51%

Confidence level intelligence officials are supposed to have of a target’s “foreignness” to make use of PRISM data. The massive database is aimed at surveilling spies and foreign terrorists, not Americans. However, large amounts of American user data is also picked up as officials hunt for threats. The NSA describes this as “incidental.”

Zelkova Wrote:Is the dystopian future I have been warned about?

Corn Wrote:Wonder if they actually blocked a major terrorist attack a few months ago. If they have...I guess it'd be worth it? I don't know.

Jamesie Wrote:I don't care because there's nothing about me to be suspicious of.

Flonne Wrote:People die, terrorist attacks happen; people need to learn that life isn't the most important thing a person can give up, not by a long shot.

Flonne Wrote:That's a terrible mindset. It leads to all of society under the elite being human livestock, existing only on the whim of those above us. I'm not OK with that, and I don't know why you are.

Jamesie Wrote:Except that's how the vast majority of society has survived under as. I honestly (off the top of my head) can't think of a single point in history where those under the elite were not merely tools for the elite. It could possibly only offend me (mind you, a small amount) if it were being used to force the entirety of a population into a very specific mindset, eliminating those who try to dissent.

Why don't I care? I honestly couldn't care less if someone is looking through my history and such. I have a Twitter, I have a Tumblr, I have a Facebook. I'm already a fairly "open' individual (bar my Facebook which is conventionally "closed"). You probably could learn more about me from just looking through my Twitter and Tumblr than you could through my internet history. Want to look through my history? It's a lot of Wikipedia, Tumblr, Twitter, online databases, and some porn interspersed. In this day and age, there is no such thing as privacy. If you so exist in any form on the internet (Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook, 4chan, Twitter, etc.), you have no privacy. Even without a backdoor, people can learn an immense amount about you.

Flonne Wrote:Of course everyone already does it, and of course none of this is new to me; I've known about all of this forever, this is just solid proof of it, that's all. Just because "everyone does it" doesn't make it OK. "That's how it's always been" doesn't make it OK, either; we are supposed to be evolving as a species and as a society, it's our job to fix this ourselves, because it won't fix itself, and the ones doing it certainly won't give it up without a fight.

Words Wrote:ITT: People don't understand how rights work.

Jamesie Wrote:I don't have an explicit Constitutional right to privacy on the internet, sorry. The only right to privacy I have is one that is created out of, more or less, reading between the lines. And as far as I know, the Supreme Court hasn't upheld that the Constitution protects your "right to privacy" on the internet. Not to mention almost every (if not every) right in the Constitution has been qualified to the extent that you don't have complete freedom of speech (for example) anyways.

Words Wrote:Except you're not alone and USA isn't the only country in the world. And you should care because it's your country's government that's stepping all over our rights. At least those countries that signed this:
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a12
It also pisses me off how hypocrite the whole thing is, "US rights and values being "threatened" by other country? they go into war" but when the US actually fucks everyone else there's nothing anyone can do.

Jamesie Wrote:Except that's how the vast majority of society has survived under as. I honestly (off the top of my head) can't think of a single point in history where those under the elite were not merely tools for the elite. It could possibly only offend me (mind you, a small amount) if it were being used to force the entirety of a population into a very specific mindset, eliminating those who try to dissent.

Jamesie Wrote:Why don't I care? I honestly couldn't care less if someone is looking through my history and such. I have a Twitter, I have a Tumblr, I have a Facebook. I'm already a fairly "open' individual (bar my Facebook which is conventionally "closed"). You probably could learn more about me from just looking through my Twitter and Tumblr than you could through my internet history. Want to look through my history? It's a lot of Wikipedia, Tumblr, Twitter, online databases, and some porn interspersed. In this day and age, there is no such thing as privacy. If you so exist in any form on the internet (Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook, 4chan, Twitter, etc.), you have no privacy. Even without a backdoor, people can learn an immense amount about you.

Jamesie Wrote:Except history has proven that you cannot make a society equal (even modern social experiments prove that). In addition, history also shows that utopias are impossible. Humans are flawed, therefore society will be flawed.

Jamesie Wrote:I don't have an explicit Constitutional right to privacy on the internet, sorry. The only right to privacy I have is one that is created out of, more or less, reading between the lines. And as far as I know, the Supreme Court hasn't upheld that the Constitution protects your "right to privacy" on the internet. Not to mention almost every (if not every) right in the Constitution has been qualified to the extent that you don't have complete freedom of speech (for example) anyways.

KhainiWest Wrote:So sacrifice your individuality for the sole of purpose of knowing you're garbage compared to those above you? What a depressing lifestyle. I'm surprised you didn't drop out of school as education would be a wasted tool on an insect right?

KhainiWest Wrote:It's not simply to your internet history. Pictures, videos, places you visit, your entire life could be entirely mapped out. You aren't old enough to actually appreciate privacy, but when I'm able to pull up your address, see the appraisal of your house, your debt, spending habits, and haven't dated in a decade, those are things people can use against you. In fact employers could be even more prejudice knowing those facts, and all your mistakes.

KhainiWest Wrote:You learn from history, you learn to fix those mistakes, not give up on the task because they have already been made.

KhainiWest Wrote:You're absolutely right. Do you know why? Because what you're referring to is actually in the Bill of rights. Oh did you forget that document considering your posts just scream dependency.