[access-uk] Article about Prism and our privacy invasion.
- From: Colin Howard <colin@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:40:07 +0100
Greetings,
This came from the VicugL grop.
From: Deborah Kendrick
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 09:52:39 -0400
Thought you all might be interested in this.
PRISM: There Simply is No Privacy. None.
By:
Shelly Palmer
on 6.14.13
PRISM
When news broke last week that Verizon was handing over information about
all of its calls to the National Security Administration, things were bad
enough. In the week since then, however, things have only gotten worse for
our personal security. A program called PRISM was outed by the Washington
Post.
According to the top-secret document obtained by the Washington Post, the
NSA and FBI have been "tapping directly into the central servers of nine
leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats,
photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to
track foreign targets." How big is PRISM, you ask? Massive. The document
states that the collection comes "directly from the servers of these U.S.
Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype,
YouTube, Apple." Basically, anything you've ever shared with anyone about
anything on the Internet has (maybe) already been seen by the government.
Scared yet? Blow That Whistle At Your Own Peril The reason any of this
information came to light in the first place is because a 29-year-old former
technical assistant for the CIA had enough. Edward Snowden decided that he
"[didn't] want to live in a society that does these sort of things," so he
worked with The Guardian to produce the original report
With "no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing
wrong," Snowden asked the Guardian to reveal his identity. The Guardian
posits that Snowden will go down as one of the United States' "most
consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg [the Pentagon
Papers] and Bradley Manning [Wikileaks]."
Snowden felt so wronged by what the government was doing that he was willing
to give up the comfortable life he led with his girlfriend, which included a
$200,000/year salary and a home in Hawaii, just to bring the government's
privacy breaches to light. Snowden said: "I'm willing to sacrifice all of
that because I can't, in good conscience, allow the US government to destroy
privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world
with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."
After deciding to leak this classified information, Snowden traveled to Hong
Kong - a city he believes has a "spirited commitment to free speech and the
right of political dissent." He is living in what some may call a state of
paranoia, according to the Guardian: "He lines the door of his hotel room
with pillows to prevent eavesdropping. He puts a large red hood over his
head and laptop when entering his passwords to prevent any hidden cameras
from detecting them."
What's Happened Since? President Obama has come out to defend the PRISM,
saying that "every member of Congress has been briefed on the program" and
that "what you've got is two programs that were originally authorized by
Congress and repeatedly authorized by Congress." Obama acknowledged, "modest
encroachments on privacy" and said "there are some tradeoffs involved," but
that our "duly elected representatives have been consistently informed on
exactly what we're doing." Essentially, as Gizmodo puts it, Obama said,
"Deal with it."
As far as the companies that are implicated go, they all acted in PRPM
(Public Relations Panic Mode). Several of the companies implicated in PRISM
issued public Statements denying all knowledge of the program, and claiming
no participation. Google's CEO Larry Page said his company has "not joined
any program that would give the U.S. government-or any other
government-direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does
not have direct access or a 'back door' to the information stored in our
data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday."
Page called for "a more transparent approach" and said Google had "never
heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received-an order that appears
to have required them to hand over millions of users' call records. We were
very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist."
Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg quickly followed suit, saying, "Facebook is
not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other
government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket
request or court order from any government agency asking for information or
metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did,
we would fight it aggressively. We hadn't even heard of PRISM before
[Thursday, June 6]."
These types of blanket statements led sites like TechCrunch to wonder, " If
PRISM Is Real, Why Are All These Tech Companies Denying Participation?" In
addition to the statements issued by Page and Zuckerberg, TechCrunch said:
"We contacted every single one of the companies implicated on these slides,
though, and all of them either denied having ever heard of the program and
virtually all of them claim that they would never give any government
"direct access" to their servers. The one line virtually all of them use is
some variation of "we do not provide the government with direct access to
our servers." They all, however, say that they comply with court orders
after scrutinizing the request."
When you have a top-secret government data-mining project like PRISM, which
the government has acknowledged is real, yet every tech company implicated
denies involvement, where do you stand? Who can you trust?
A Public Display of Information Requests In the time since it denied any
involvement in PRISM, Google announced it wants permission to disclose how
many information requests it gets from federal agencies under the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Google's Chief Legal Officer, David
Drummond, published a letter on the company's corporate blog that was
written to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert
Mueller, which sought clearance "to add data on FISA requests that Google
receives to its Transparency Report." This would mark a significant shift in
how companies like Google are able to treat FISA requests, because "under
the rules of FISA, simply disclosing the fact That you've been served with a
FISA request is by itself illegal. And, like so much else that's considered
too secret to discuss in this matter, it's difficult to have an informed
discussion about any of it if disclosure of even the most basic facts about
it is illegal." Like it did when denying involvement with PRISM in the first
place, Facebook Followed Google's lead and asked to disclose the information
requests it receives under FISA. Ted Ullyot, Facebook's general counsel,
issued a statement encouraging "all governments to be much more transparent
about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe" and "[welcoming] the
opportunity to provide a transparency report that allows us to share [.] a
complete picture of the government requests we receive and how we respond."
Microsoft also issued a similar statement, asking for permission for
"greater transparency on the aggregate volume and scope of national security
requests" as this "would help the community understand and debate these
important issues." Can't I Get Some Privacy Around Here??? With the looming
back-and-forth between the federal government and the Companies implicated
in PRISM, it doesn't seem likely that a resolution is coming any time soon.
Being an active member of a social networking community - whether it's
Facebook, Twitter, or anything else - means ceding a fair amount of privacy.
The information, photos and check-ins you share are already public
information (to an extent), even if your security settings are maxed out.
Nothing you do on the Internet is truly private, and nothing you put on the
Internet will ever really be deleted. Surrendering your right to privacy is
the price of living an Internet-based "connected" life.
However, when it comes to phone calls, there's an easy way to fly under the
radar. use disposable cell phones. Disposable cell phones (or no contract
phones, prepaid cell phones or "burners") can be purchased at just about any
store that carries cell phones.
Best Buy carries them, as does Walmart, Staples and more. Best Buy 's site
says the benefits of no-contract phones include no long-term contracts, no
activation fees and no credit checks.
But, more importantly when it comes to security and privacy, prepaid cell
Phones will make you harder to track as they don't make you sign up for a
calling plan and hand over the personal information that entails. You can
pay cash for one of these phones (as well as the minutes and data you need
to fill it with), and be in and out of a store without ever even showing an
ID.
This isn't completely foolproof, though, as these phones' calls are
generally transmitted over existing networks - prepaid phone carriers use
chunks of space on
existing wireless networks (including Verizon's). If your call is run
through Verizon, it's
still being logged - albeit without your personal information attached. And
if the government really wants to keep tabs on you, they will - disposable
cell phone or not. Which begs for the question, why collect the telephone
metadata of law-abiding citizens, when the "bad guys" aren't even on the
grid? I wish this issue were as simple as, "privacy" or "safety" - pick one.
It isn't.
There is no sound bite or 140 character answer for this. It is a complicated
Issue and it needs to be discussed.
Is this the America you want to live in? You get to make the choice. Contact
Your elected leaders and tell them how you feel about privacy, the 4th
Amendment,
hunting bad guys and technology. Make yourself heard! As you know, we don't
live in
a democracy, we live in a Republic - our elected leaders make our decisions
for us. If you don't like the decisions. you're entitled to the peaceful
transition of power on Election Day. In this case, it's all up to you.
** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe]
** If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
** and in the Subject line type
** unsubscribe
** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the
** immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq]
** or send a message, to
** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq
Other related posts:
