"We need to find a way forward to make sure that we can stop terrorists while protecting
privacy and liberty of innocent Americans."
"This is not about giving the state access to the content of people's e-mails or telephone
conversations.
That requires a warrant and all the proper processes have to be gone through."
"The public shouldn't be worried about this.
This is about insuring that police and security services can continue to protect the public,
continue to catch criminals, and stop terrorists."
"We have to find a way to give the President the power he needs to protect us while making
sure that he doesn't abuse that power."
"An awful lot of misinformation, frankly, has been put about about what's being proposed."
So the America and British public have been repeatedly reassured they have nothing to
be concerned about over increased surveillance measures.
But a recent top secret leak from the NSA has proven that the agency has a massive surveillance
program called Boundless Informant.
The program analyzes all of the data collected by their intelligence gathering systems and
the leak showed that in March 2013 three billion pieces of intelligence were collected from
US computer networks and worldwide 97 billion pieces of intelligence were gathered.
It's pretty embarrassing for the NSA because they've repeatedly tried to reassure the American
public that they had no such capability but let's take a step back for a second.
Just who are the NSA?
It stands for National Security Agency and they're in charge of collecting cryptologic
intelligence on foreign targets i.e. not American people.
The American public are protected by the Fourth Amendment which means that no wiretapping
can take place without the approval of US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the
Attorney General of the United States or the Director of the NSA and a whole bunch of other
stipulations all there to protect the public.
But that didn't stop the Bush administration from expanding the NSA's powers so they could
monitor the web activity, including e-mails and telephone calls of US citizens if one
end of the communication was outside the US.
That caused quite a bit of controversy in the United States way back in 2007 and then
in 2011 the controversy stepped up again when James Bamford wrote an article for WIRED claiming
that the NSA was involved in a massive data mining operation in Utah.
At that time, Chris Inglis the NSA's highest-ranking civilian told reporters, "I can't tell you
a lot about what they're going to be doing, because it's highly classified."
Congress couldn't ignore all of the noise and they started to ask questions and the
NSA kept batting those accusations out of the park.
"Does the NSA routinely intercept American citizens e-mails?"
"No."
"Does the NSA intercept Americans cellphone conversations?"
"No."
"Google searches?"
"No."
"Text messages?"
"No."
"Msn.com orders?"
"No."
"Bank records?"
"No."
But the latest leak shows just how far this NSA surveillance program has gone.
We now know that the NSA use BoundlessInformant to analyze all of their intelligence.
A capability they have repeatedly denied they actually have.
"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of
records?"
"No sir."
"It does not?"
"Not wittingly."
Boundelessinformant analyzes significant amounts of data and a heat map in the leak showed
that Iran and Pakistan were heavily monitored but the program didn't stop there.
PRISM is the code name for their program to access data held by tech giants like Facebook,
Google, Microsoft, and Skype.
Although those companies deny knowing the program exists at all.
This slide shows that when each of those services were added to the PRISM program and this slide
shows the kinds of data the NSA has access to.
Things like your e-mail, your chats, including video and voice chat, your videos, photos,
stored data, Skype calls, file transfers, and even your log-ins.
The scale of this data access means that almost anybody in any country could have their information
accessed.
In an interview with the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, the man behind
the leak Edward Snowden revealed just how powerful this data is.
"I sat at my desk certainly had the authority to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant
to a federal judge to even the President if I had a personal e-mail."
And so then came the back pedaling from the politicians who reassured the public that
there was nothing to worry about.
General James Clapper who denied the existence of these programs in Congress called the leaks
reprehensible.
President Obama said congressional oversight would stop the NSA becoming Big Brother but
since he said that it's been revealed that congressional leaders were briefed on it just
13 times in four years so Congress was hardly doing its job of overseeing the agency.
Al Gore tweeted that it was obscenely outrageous to have people secretly surveilled and others
have said it has broken the United States constitution.
Over here the government has refused to confirm or deny whether the UK's GCHQ has had access
to information gathered using the NSA's PRISM system and foreign secretary William Hague
said that law-abiding citizens have no reason to worry.
The argument goes that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear but is this
really how privacy works.
When people close the curtains in their living rooms at night they do not because they have
something to hide but because they're entitled to some privacy.
Would you let people peer through your living room window without your knowledge even if
you didn't have anything to hide?
And if that's the case shouldn't this be the way that digital privacy works as well.
Then there's another issue which is yet to be discussed at great length.
John Perkins the author of 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman' has highlighted the potential
for blackmail.
If the NSA can dig up information on anyone it likes, it's possible that dirt can be found
on anyone, a presidential candidate, a supreme court judge, academics.
It's personal information on their sexuality or previous drug use that they might want
to keep private and that information can be used to blackmail people.
With access to this kind of data the NSA have the potential to hold a dagger over a huge
number of people so should any agency have access to this kind of information?
Daniel Elsberg who leaked the Pentagon papers 40 years ago has described Edward Snowden
as 'saving America'.
He wrote that a digital police state infrastructure had been created in the United States.
Elsberg also says that this leak is the most important in the US's history.
"The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is
that nothing will change."
It will be interesting to see what people in the United States say, it will be very
interesting to see how governments respond and as ever we're always interested to hear
what you guys think so let us know your thoughts about this story in a comment and if this
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