It was Edward Snowden, who revealed that the surveillance capabilities of some of the democratic governments of the West are such that they can access almost anything their citizens do online or over a fixed or mobile telephone in the absence of meaningful democratic or judicial controls.
“Highlights” of the NSA Files released so far include:
• The Verizon Court Order: the first of the Snowden leaks revealed that the NSA was collecting the phone records of millions of Americans. While the scheme was launched by the Bush administration, it was widely believed that Obama had scrapped it.
• “Prism”: enables the NSA and GCHQ to “mine” information from the servers of some of the biggest American technology companies (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, AOL, PalTalk and Yahoo). A similar programme called “Muscular” was intercepting millions of records a day from Yahoo and Google.
“Tempora”, part of the “master the internet” programme: GCHQ intercepts and stores the vast amounts of data flowing in and out of the UK via the undersea fibre-optic cables that are the veins of the World Wide Web.
Tempora, part of the “master the internet” programme
Xkeyscore
Boundless informant
Bullrun and Edgehill
Cyberwar, espionage and collusion
These firms called for “wide-scale changes” to US government surveillance based on five principles for reform:
“sensible limitations” on government collection of information and an end to bulk data collection
Stronger oversight and accountability of intelligence agencies
Transparency about government demands and surveillance powers
Respect for the “free flow of information”
“robust, principled and transparent framework” to govern lawful requests for data across jurisdictions.
This report is meant to urge US politicians to put a stop to the National Security Agency's collection of data.
