Around lunch time today, we talked about how Verizon was compelled by the NSA (National Security Agency) to share call data as and when required, and obviously this explosion of news eventually saw word leaked out that the top secret NSA program has not stopped, and is continuing to collect data from millions of phone records, tapping into the central servers of nine leading US Internet companies to boot. Among the other data extracted include audio and video conversations, photos, e-mails, documents and even connection logs – all in the name for analysts to track foreign targets.
This program has been given the code-name PRISM, and it has finally been made public, although there is a very high possibility too that this could be the first of its kind. After all, one of the NSA’s purpose of existence would be to obtain secrets in any means possible and to break codes, where it has grown comfortable with co-operation alongside other corporate entities to divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. Among the Internet companies affected include Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. While some of these companies have been said to deny the fact that they are aware of PRISM and they do not provide direct access to their database of information by the NSA, how about indirect access? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.