The Unsettling Truth About PRISM

PRISM is the National Security Agency's monitoring program, which began in 2007. Its declared purpose is to monitor valuable foreign communication that may pass through US systems. The Washington Post, on the other hand, reported that its scope is significantly wider than what it wants people to believe. According to the paper, PRISM is responsible for nearly one out of every seven intelligence reports. In fact, information from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, and other well-known technological corporations is vulnerable to PRISM.

What causes it to happen?

Upstream surveillance captures data moving across the Internet; however, the information is frequently partial because it is encrypted. Because it is encrypted, traffic data transmitted on Skype, for example, cannot be intercepted or deciphered. The same is true for Google searches, as all data is transmitted over a secure HTTPS connection. This is the type of information that the NSA seeks, and regrettably, it can compel these corporations to hand over such information under the Foreign Intelligence Monitoring Act with orders from a secret court that oversees government surveillance in the last three years. The NSA is capable of doing so, and any corporation that dares to oppose it has been defeated. Even small-scale service providers are providing collected data to PRISM if the agency requests it.

These firms, as well as the US government, will deny ever providing it out or requesting it. According to sources, while access to these data may not be deemed technically direct, firms have offered portals for the NSA to dig into this abundance of information. Whatever you label it or define it as there is no doubt that this is happening. Although the original intent of PRISM was to monitor solely international communications, there is no denying that it has access to local data as well. There are no specific figures, but the government is requesting metadata from phone providers that include all call logs for each phone number. They may not be listening to each of them individually, but they are clearly keeping note of who you are phoning.