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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Tech companies tied up with the NSA's internet surveillance scandal have released government | |
| data requests this week in an effort to maintain user trust when it comes to the handling of | |
| their personal information. | |
| Combined figures from Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google total about 40,000 requests from law enforcement since December 2012. | |
| The most common requests concern fraud, homicides, kidnappings, burglaries, and hoping to prevent a suicide. | |
| Noticeably absent are requests concerning national security. | |
| That's because a government gag order prevents the tech giants from releasing that information. | |
| These figures only represent user data that was provided after being served a warrant or subpoena. | |
| It does not represent FISA requests, which is what the NSA uses as part of the PRISM program. | |
| According to numbers from the Boundless Informant Program, these figures are 100,000 times less than the 3 billion pieces of data mined from U.S. | |
| servers in March alone. | |
| According to leaked PRISM slides, the government has direct access to server systems. | |
| But one tech CEO said that would be impossible unless the government had breached the servers. | |
| Now, Obama referred to the NSA receiving metadata in bulk. | |
| He said the bits of information called were telephone numbers, a location, and the duration of the phone call, assuring that there was no names or no content in the database. | |
| But if there is no content in the database, then how does the FBI retroactively gain access to the content of your phone calls? | |
| It was not a voicemail, it was just a conversation. | |
| There's no way they actually could find out what happened, right? | |
| Unless she tells them. | |
| No, there is a way. | |
| We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. | |
| Welcome to America. | |
| All of that stuff is being captured as we speak, whether we know it or like it or not. | |
| NSA whistleblower William Binney spoke of an even earlier surveillance tool in a recent interview with Democracy Now! | |
| The nearest devices that they deployed starting, I think, around 2003 onto the fiber optic networks were capturing the emails and voice over IP, and that was being stored. | |
| That's why you have to build places like Bluffdale in Utah, that's a big storage facility, because they're collecting so much data. | |
| The content is really the bulk that needs to be, that they're storing. | |
| Now Benny went on to say that the content collected on the fiber optic lines only represented about 80% of what's on the internet. | |
| But by going to the tech company's servers, the NSA is able to fill in the holes and get a complete picture of what is actually on the internet. | |
| All that data will be stored in the Utah Spy Center, which Benny says will hold up to 500 years worth of all the world's communication. | |
| And its main focus will be analysis and code breaking. |
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