move is being filed by various
governments, even though it's illegal.
It figures that Cheney and his chimp
were responsible. One doesn't
understand the law, the other
doesn't care about it.
checkit: AP
Secret
to Prism program: Even bigger data seizure
By
STEPHEN BRAUN, ANNE FLAHERTY, JACK GILLUM and MATT APUZZO
—
Jun. 15 11:34 AM EDT
WASHINGTON
(AP) — In the months and early years after 9/11, FBI agents began showing up at
Microsoft Corp. more frequently than before, armed with court orders demanding information on customers.
Around
the world, government spies and eavesdroppers were tracking the email and
Internet addresses used by suspected terrorists. Often, those trails led to the
world's largest software company and, at the time, largest email provider.
The agents wanted email archives, account
information, practically everything, and quickly. Engineers compiled the data,
sometimes by hand, and delivered it to the government.
Often there was no easy way to tell if the
information belonged to foreigners or Americans. So much data was changing
hands that one former Microsoft employee recalls that the engineers were anxious about whether the company
should cooperate.
Inside Microsoft, some called it "Hoovering" — not after the vacuum
cleaner, but after J. Edgar Hoover, the first FBI director, who gathered
dirt on countless Americans.
…
Deep in the oceans, hundreds of cables carry much of the world's phone and
Internet traffic. Since at least the early 1970s, the NSA has been tapping foreign cables. It doesn't
need permission. That's its job.
But Internet data doesn't care about borders.
Send an email from Pakistan to Afghanistan and it might pass through a mail
server in the United States, the same computer that handles messages to and
from Americans. The NSA is prohibited from spying
on Americans or anyone inside the United States. That's the FBI's job and it
requires a warrant.
Despite that prohibition, shortly after the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush secretly authorized the NSA to plug into the fiber optic
cables that enter and leave the United States, knowing it would give the
government unprecedented, warrantless access to Americans' private
conversations.
…
The government has said it minimizes all conversations and emails involving
Americans. Exactly what that means remains classified. But former U.S.
officials familiar with the process say it allows
the government to keep the information as long as it is labeled as belonging to
an American and stored in a special, restricted part of a computer.
That means Americans' personal emails can live
in government computers, but analysts can't access, read or listen to them
unless the emails become relevant to a national security investigation.
