“The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials,” Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani report for The Washington Post.
“By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from among hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans,” Gellman and Soltani report. “The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.”
“According to a top secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks to data warehouses at the agency’s Fort Meade headquarters,” Gellman and Soltani report. “In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records — ranging from ‘metadata,’ which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, to content such as text, audio and video.”
“The infiltration is especially striking because the NSA, under a separate program known as PRISM, has front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved process,” Gellman and Soltani report. “The MUSCULAR project appears to be an unusually aggressive use of NSA tradecraft against flagship American companies. The agency is built for high-tech spying, with a wide range of digital tools, but it has not been known to use them routinely against U.S. companies.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: United States Constitution, Amendment IV:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Join The Electronic Frontier Foundation in calling for a full congressional investigation here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Obama administration decides NSA spying is ‘essential,’ but oversight of NSA is not – October 8, 2013
Apple’s iPhone 5s with Touch ID seen as protection against U.S. NSA – September 16, 2013
German government: Windows 8 contains U.S. NSA snooping back doors; too dangerous to use – August 23, 2013
Report: NSA can see 75% of U.S. Web traffic, can snare emails – August 21, 2013
NSA can read email, online chats, track Web browsing without warrant, documents leaked by Edward Snowden show – July 31, 2013
Momentum builds against U.S. government surveillance – July 29, 2013
U.S. House rejects effort to curb NSA surveillance powers, 205-217 – July 24, 2013
Obama administration scrambles to shut down imminent U.S. House vote to defund NSA spying – July 24, 2013
Obama administration demands master encryption keys from firms in order to conduct electronic surveillance against Internet users – July 24, 2013
Apple, Google, dozens of others push Obama administration to disclose U.S. surveillance requests – July 19, 2013
Secret court agrees to allow Yahoo to reveal its fight against U.S. government PRISM requests – July 16, 2013
How Microsoft handed U.S. NSA, FBI, CIA access to users’ encrypted video, audio, and text communications – July 11, 2013
DuckDuckGo search engine surges 33% in wake of PRISM scandal – June 20, 2013
Yahoo: Since December 2012, we have received up to 13,000 U.S. gov’t requests for customer data – June 18, 2013
Apple: Since December 2012, we have received U.S. gov’t requests for customer data for up to 10,000 accounts – June 17, 2013
Nine companies, including Apple, tied to PRISM, Obama to be smacked with class-action lawsuit – June 12, 2013
U.S. lawmakers urge review of ‘Prism’ domestic spying, Patriot Act – June 10, 2013
PRISM: Do Apple, Google, Facebook have an ethical obligation not to spy on users? – June 8, 2013
Plausible deniability: The strange and unbelievable similarities in the Apple, Google, and Facebook PRISM denials – June 7, 2013
Google’s Larry Page on government eavesdropping: ‘We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday’ – June 7, 2013
Seecrypt app lets iPhone, Android users keep voice calls, text messages away from carriers, government eyes and ears – June 7, 2013
Obama administration defends PRISM data-collection as legal anti-terrorism tool – June 7, 2013
Facebook, Google, Yahoo join Apple in sort-of denying PRISM involvement – June 7, 2013
Report: Intelligence program gives U.S. government direct access to customer data on Apple servers; Apple denies – June 6, 2013
MDN: “Join The Electronic Frontier Foundation in calling for a full congressional investigation.”
Do you really trust congress to conduct such an investigation?
While we like to laugh at them, the crazy guys hiding out in bunkers will one day be recognized as the canaries in the mindshaft.
“…canaries in the mindshaft.”
Brilliant. 😀
Yeah … but don’t forget that the warning of danger was when the canaries keeled over dead.
With apologies to Monty Python –
It’s not pining, it’s passed on. This canary is no more! It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late canary. It’s a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies. Its rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-canary.
So … look out for a spate of dead crazy bunker guys
tweet.
And they had the gall to call Steve Jobs “Big Brother”!
And where is the NRA and gun advocates now regarding protection of constitutional rights? By the way boys and girls of the NRA, the government didn’t need you to register your cache of arms as they know you have them already. Oh, and about defending yourself when they come to get your guns, one well placed missile from a drone will negate their need to deal with you. Be paranoid as you truly are being watched.
Nice try.
Where are the NRA and gun advocates? Right in the front lines. Apparently you haven’t been paying attention.
Sorry, about 75% of my guns are unknown to the government. Purchased way before any registration or background checks, or legally avoiding them through legal face-to-face, in-state private transfers.
The success of the 2nd Amendment doesn’t depend on the citizens defeating a standing government military. It depends on despotism being so messy politically and practically, because of an armed citizenry, that it’s not thinkable (yet). The largest army in America, by far, takes the field every Fall. It’s known as “deer season”.
I’m guessing you never talked about your guns on the phone, or wrote about the fact that you have them on a public internet blog, eh Al Hussein Zeke?
Ever heard the term “Molon Labe”?
The wing nuts are coming out in full force.
But the government is only doing this to keep us safe. Right? Right?
Yeah, you should read “I, Robot”, by Isaac Asimov. All citizens were assigned personal robot assistants to protect themselves from themselves!
Read the book, don’t just watch the movie. Only the titles are the same.
What! It is against the law period. I do not want a “full congressional investigation”. I want it stopped now. This group of clowns in DC have crippled the names and honor of many American companies now to the point that people here and overseas would rather avoid using American products and services because they fear what is now documented American government hacking and intrusion into their personal and professional lives. When the President says that America will put a stop to looking at other leaders in other countries and sees no problem violating the Constitution by boldly searching any and all general American citizens personal “papers and effects”, there is a problem in the homeland.
Do you investigate an on going crime or put a stop to it? If a police officer came upon a rape of a woman, should they start an investigation or stop the attack? We are way past the point of investigating if there is a crime going on now and the government isn’t even denying it is happening. Stop the criminal act and “investigate” it later with some prison time please!
Melissa Melissa use me.
Impeach/Convict/Execute.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/obama-approval-rating-poll-99135.html?hp=l2
Vote! If you don’t like the way others vote, leave the country and find one that meets your standards.
surely you realize when the US dollar collapses, your little socialist experiment up north will be in worse shape than the United States.
Canada won’t let you in. Sorry.
Canada may not have a choice. Sorry.
Why would anyone want to live in canada?
The canucks suck.
http://www.topforexnews.com/2013/10/09/canadian-dollar-falls-trade-deficit-widens/
botvinnik is as lovable as Elmer Fudd. Just not as smart… 😆
thanks, Shill.
On this site, we no longer call someone a troll. We call them a “botvinnik”.
botvinnik = troll … I love that!
Sometimes electro you really annoy me with your profound dislike of conversational talk, so, I find this funny -The term “profane” originates from classical Latin “profanus” –
“Haha, he said anus” …
Yes, thank you Nelson.
Maybe the NSA will do something about all the junk email we get! 🙂
More unconstitutional BS.
Impeach this administration!
George, your idea would be great if:
1) impeachment accomplished anything useful
2) your Congress actually represented YOU instead of corporations, i.e., the “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower warned us all about
3) the current administration actually changed anything. Far from it, practically everything that any previous administration started, Obama has continued unchanged.
4) back to Congress: they are the ones supposedly holding “secret courts”, and they are the ones who write legislation.
The executive doesn’t have significant choice in most programs; he is supposed to execute all past laws that Congress has passed with the budget Congress grants. Just look at the difference between discretionary and non-discretionary spending in any proposed budget. Often, noble causes are so underfunded that they have no choice but to be ineffective — earmarks, social programs, and wasteful military largesse soak up too much.
Moreover, any executive of any organization with ANY political persuasion will ALWAYS have a list of things to do that is longer than the budget allows. Thanks to the paranoia spread in the wake of 2001’s tragedy, the NSA was considered a cheap way to enhance security (regardless of its need), and it is Congress that wrote the bill. Bush signed it, and as I mentioned before, Obama simply continued what was already in operation. What Americans should be doing is writing letters to their congressmen daily, if not hourly, to demand that any agency with the words “Security Agency” be immediately dismantled, de-funded, and permanently banned via constitutional amendment. Free people do not need nannies. Corporations, always on the lookout for profits, are the ones that benefit from such paranoid policies. Almost ALL large-scale programs undertaken by the federal government since WW2 have been first and foremost gifts to for-profit companies, many of them multinational, instead of driven by citizen need or desire. Doesn’t matter the political party.
Only the American people are going to end the current endless, ill-defined “War on Terror” with its never-ending list of enemies and draconian NSA, TSA, etc. When Americans throw the oversized yoke of the Pentagon and insatiable security complexes off their shoulders, they will discover no sudden national vulnerability, and might even see the realistic opportunity for a balanced budget. It would be a better step than grinding all political progress to a halt, as the current idiots in Congress have done not just this autumn but for the past 10+ years.
…now watch as the partisans on this forum and elsewhere attempt to tear each other apart and shoot pot-shots at one stupid politician or another instead of proposing pragmatic solutions. You get what you vote for.
What! …you all think that the actual president has any choice in this?
The back room boys could squash him like a tick, anytime.
Time to take off the shades, see the size of the dung hill and grow up.
of course he has a choice…and so do we.
What choice exactly? Challenge the authority of his masters and get his head blown off like JFK?
point taken.
but you have to admit that one guy with courage, like Snowden or Lech Walesa, can make profound changes.
For the worse –
Lee Harvey Oswald
Vlad Dracula
Joseph Stalin
Adolf Hitler
Pol Pot
Idi Amin
Ivan the Terrible
Mao Zedong
Tomas de Torquemada
Leopold II of Belgium
Genghis Khan
Attila the Hun
Caligula
Nero
Emperor Hirohito
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
Kim Il Sung
Maximilien Robespierre
Adolf Eichmann
Heinrich Himmler
Saddam Hussein
Osama bin Laden
Reinhard Heydrich
Josef Mengele
Talat Pasha
Elizabeth Bathory
For the better –
Steve Jobs
Abraham Lincoln
Benjamin Franklin
Mikhail Gorbachev
Nelson Mandela
Albert Einstein
Marie Curie
Thomas Jefferson
Martin Luther King
William Shakespeare
Leonardo da Vinci
Helen Keller
Rosa Parks
Mother Teresa
Mahatma Gandhi
Winston Churchill
Socrates
Tom Paine
Jane Goodall
Anne Frank
Galileo
Swami Vivekananda
George Orwell
John M Keynes
Marcus Aurelius
William Blake
Confucius
Mozart
John Keats
Raisa Gorbachev
Eleanor Roosevelt
Woodrow Wilson
Leo Tolstoy
Sri Krishna
Louis PasteuRumi
Charles Darwin
Akbar
Barack Obama
C S Lewis
Saladin
Martin Luther
Edward Jenner
Sir Isaac Newton
14th Dalai Lama
Pablo Picasso
Desmond Tutu
Michelangelo
Jesse Owens
John F. Kennedy
Raphael
Beethoven
Sri Chinmoy
St Teresa of Avila
Abbe Pierre
Sri Aurobindo
Annie Besant
Emile Zatopek
St Therese Lisieux
J R R Tolkien
Emily Dickinson
Betty Williams
Paramhansa Yogananda
Maharishi Mahesh yogi
Eva Peron
Sir Titus Salt
Augn San Suu Kyi
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Harriet Becher Stow
Kofi Annan
Millicent Fawcett
Maya Angelou
Malala Yousafzai
Flipboard of NSA & Internet Security stuff.
Works on Safari or the iOS app.
http://flip.it/3Ivej
I find it a bit hypocritical that everyone bitches and moans about the NSA monitoring yours, mine and practically everyones online communications for potential terrorist activity but no one has a problem with big business actually USING that exact same data for profit, selling and trading it to whoever’s willing. Perhaps if NSA actually PAID Yahoo, Google, whomever for this data, THEN would people settle down?
Bingo!
Wait wait what???
This is what I react to. I’m the US media reporting it seems totally ok to spy on foreigners even allays… But Americans…. No no… If you are going to spy at least spy on yourself and don’t subject any one else… There should be grave sanctions imposed by Russia, EU and China on the US for this…