U.S. Intelligence coordinator james clapper acknowledged that data is being collected without naming the ausmab. President barack obama defended the surveillance program as part of the fight against terrorism. Federal government examines whether german users are also affected.
"You can’t have 100 percent security and 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience," obama said friday in california. He assured that the collection of phone data by the NSA intelligence agency does not include names or content: "no one is hoarding your calls."
On reports of internet surveillance, obama said it "doesn’t apply to u.S. Citizens" and doesn’t apply to "people who live in the u.S.". Congress is regularly informed about the programs as the representative of the electorate and demands them. A special court has the ultimate supervision. In addition, there are numerous mechanisms in place to prevent abuse.
The "washington post" and the "guardian" published several pages with graphics from an internal presentation of the US intelligence agency NSA, which show the flow of information to the NSA within the framework of a program called "PRISM. The presentation shows that data collection has gradually been extended to more and more internet companies.
Microsoft has been involved since 2007, followed by yahoo (2008), google and facebook (2009) and finally apple since october 2012. It is about a fulle of information such as e-mails, photos, videos, chats and other stored data. This enables analysts to track people’s activities over longer periods of time. The program costs around $20 million a year – which again seems very little for a data collection of this size.
According to information from the "guardian", intelligence services of other countries also gained access to the data collected with "PRISM". In the documents available, the british NSA counterpart GCHQ (government communications headquarters) is named, which has retrieved almost 200 reports from the database since 2010.
In berlin, government spokesman steffen seibert would not rule out the possibility that the proceedings could be a topic at chancellor angela merkel’s meeting with obama next week. The federal government is now calling for a "german connection". Federal data protection commissioner peter schaar spoke of "outrageous accusations of total surveillance". Hesse’s justice minister, jorg-uwe hahn (FDP), urged users to leave the aforementioned companies: "anyone who no longer wants to allow this should change provider," he told the "handelsblatt" newspaper.
The internet companies assured that there is no "backdoor" to their servers. Data was handed over to authorities only on the basis of a court order. This procedure is well known; google, for example, regularly publishes statistics on such requests in its transparency reports. "We provide data to the government in accordance with the law and we thoroughly review all such requests". From time to time, it is claimed that we are a "backwater" for the government to our systems have created, but google has no backdoor through which the government has access to private data of users," said now spokesman kay oberbeck.
The world’s largest online network facebook made a similar statement: "we do not give any government organization direct access to facebook servers."Every request for data or information on specific persons is thoroughly checked and only fulfilled as far as legally necessary. One had heard nothing of such a program until the reports, a spokeswoman said.
Apple also declared that it had never heard of PRISM. "We don’t give any government agency direct access to our computers," said a spokesman. Microsoft also emphasized that it only shares data on a legal basis: "if the government has a broader national security program to collect customer data, we don’t participate in it."Yahoo stated: "we do not give the government direct access to our servers, systems or network."
On wednesday, the guardian reported that verizon, the u.S. Telecoms company, was required to give the nsa detailed information on all voice communications. This includes who called whom, for how long, how often, and from where. Patriot act gives u.S. Authorities broad powers to monitor suspected terrorists.
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