Report: NSA pays millions for US telecom access

When it comes to tapping into U.S. telecommunications networks for surreptitious surveillance, the U.S. National Security Agency can't be accused of not paying its way.

The government agency pays "hundreds of millions of dollars a year" to U.S. telecommunications companies for the equipment and service required to intercept telephone calls, emails and instant messages of potential interest, according to a story in Thursday's Washington Post.

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For the current fiscal year, the NSA will pay $278 million for such access, and had paid $394 million in fiscal 2011, according to the Post.

Although previous news reports of NSA surveillance noted that the agency paid the costs for tapping into communications networks, the exact amount the agency has paid has not been cited before, according to the Post.

One of the largest of the 16 U.S. intelligence offices, the NSA is in charge of collecting and analyzing data to track foreign activities that could be harmful to the U.S. The agency is overseen by the U.S. Department of Defense's Director of National Intelligence.

The practice dates back at least to the 1970s. These data collection programs -- which have gone under names such as Blarney, Stormbrew, Fairview, and Oakstar -- are separate from the PRISM program first publicly unveiled by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. PRISM collects data from U.S. service providers such as Microsoft, Facebook and Google, whereas with these programs, the NSA collects potential data of interest as it moves across telecommunication gateways.

The article did not provide the names of any telecommunications companies that participate in the program, though notes they typically are paid for the costs of hardware and the labor to install and run the necessary equipment, as well as a certain percentage for profit.

The privacy advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center had noted that it is troublesome that the NSA is paying so much to telecommunication companies given that their customers expect that their communications remain private.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's email address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com.

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The NSA pays millions for U.S. telecom access

IDG News Service - When it comes to tapping into U.S. telecommunications networks for surreptitious surveillance, the U.S. National Security Agency can't be accused of not paying its way.

The government agency pays "hundreds of millions of dollars a year" to U.S. telecommunications companies for the equipment and service required to intercept telephone calls, emails and instant messages of potential interest, according to a story in Thursday's Washington Post.

For the current fiscal year, the NSA will pay $278 million for such access, and had paid $394 million in fiscal 2011, according to the Post.

Although previous news reports of NSA surveillance noted that the agency paid the costs for tapping into communications networks, the exact amount the agency has paid has not been cited before, according to the Post.

One of the largest of the 16 U.S. intelligence offices, the NSA is in charge of collecting and analyzing data to track foreign activities that could be harmful to the U.S. The agency is overseen by the U.S. Department of Defense's Director of National Intelligence.

The practice dates back at least to the 1970s. These data collection programs -- which have gone under names such as Blarney, Stormbrew, Fairview, and Oakstar -- are separate from the PRISM program first publicly unveiled by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. PRISM collects data from U.S. service providers such as Microsoft, Facebook and Google, whereas with these programs, the NSA collects potential data of interest as it moves across telecommunication gateways.

The article did not provide the names of any telecommunications companies that participate in the program, though notes they typically are paid for the costs of hardware and the labor to install and run the necessary equipment, as well as a certain percentage for profit.

The privacy advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center had noted that it is troublesome that the NSA is paying so much to telecommunication companies given that their customers expect that their communications remain private.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

View the original article here

Report: The NSA pays millions for U.S. telecom access

When it comes to tapping into U.S. telecommunications networks for surreptitious surveillance, the National Security Agency can’t be accused of not paying its way.

The government agency pays “hundreds of millions of dollars a year” to U.S. telecommunications companies for the equipment and service required to intercept telephone calls, emails and instant messages of potential interest, according to a story in Thursday’s Washington Post.

For the current fiscal year, the NSA will pay $278 million for such access, and had paid $394 million in fiscal 2011, according to the Post.

Although previous news reports of NSA surveillance noted that the agency paid the costs for tapping into communications networks, the exact amount the agency has paid has not been cited before, according to the Post.

One of the largest of the 16 U.S. intelligence offices, the NSA is in charge of collecting and analyzing data to track foreign activities that could be harmful to the U.S. The agency is overseen by the Department of Defense’s Director of National Intelligence.

The practice dates back at least to the 1970s. These data collection programs—which have gone under names such as Blarney, Stormbrew, Fairview, and Oakstar—are separate from the PRISM program first publicly unveiled by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. PRISM collects data from U.S. service providers such as Microsoft, Facebook and Google, whereas with these programs, the NSA collects potential data of interest as it moves across telecommunication gateways.

The article did not provide the names of any telecommunications companies that participate in the program, though notes they typically are paid for the costs of hardware and the labor to install and run the necessary equipment, as well as a certain percentage for profit.

The privacy advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center had noted that it is troublesome that the NSA is paying so much to telecommunication companies given that their customers expect that their communications remain private.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for the IDG News Service.
More by Joab Jackson

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Cisco fixes critical remote command execution vulnerability in Secure Access Control Server

Cisco Systems released security patches for Secure Access Control Server (Secure ACS) for Windows to address a critical vulnerability that could allow unauthenticated attackers to remotely execute arbitrary commands and take control of the underlying operating system.

Cisco Secure ACS is an application that allows companies to centrally manage access to network resources for various types of devices and users. According to Cisco's documentation, it enforces access control policies for VPN, wireless and other network users and it authenticates administrators, authorizes commands, and provides an audit trail.

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Cisco Secure ACS supports two network access control protocols: Remote Access Dial In User Service (RADIUS) and Terminal Access Controller Access-Control System Plus (TACACS+).

The newly patched vulnerability is identified as CVE-2013-3466 and affects Cisco Secure ACS for Windows versions 4.0 through 4.2.1.15 when configured as a RADIUS server with Extensible Authentication Protocol-Flexible Authentication via Secure Tunneling (EAP-FAST) authentication.

"The vulnerability is due to improper parsing of user identities used for EAP-FAST authentication," Cisco said Wednesday in a security advisory. "An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted EAP-FAST packets to an affected device."

"Successful exploitation of the vulnerability may allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands and take full control of the underlying operating system that hosts the Cisco Secure ACS application in the context of the System user for Cisco Secure ACS running on Microsoft Windows," the company said.

The vulnerability received the maximum severity score, 10.0, in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), which indicates that it is highly critical. Cisco Secure ACS for Windows version 4.2.1.15.11 was released to address the flaw.

There are no known workarounds, so upgrading to the patched version of the application is recommended.

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Developers hack Dropbox and show how to access user data

Two developers have cracked Dropbox's security, even intercepting SSL data from its servers and bypassing the cloud storage provider's two-factor authentication, according to a paper they published at USENIX 2013.

"These techniques are generic enough and we believe would aid in future software development, testing and security research," the paper says in its abstract.

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Dropbox, which claims more than 100 million users upload more than a billion files daily, said the research didn't actually represent a vulnerability in its servers.

"We appreciate the contributions of these researchers and everyone who helps keep Dropbox safe," a spokesperson said in an email reply to Computerworld. "In the case outlined here, the user's computer would first need to have been compromised in such a way that it would leave the entire computer, not just the user's Dropbox, open to attacks across the board."

The two developers, Dhiru Kholia, with the Openwall open source project, and Przemyslaw Wegrzyn, with CodePainters, said they reverse-engineered Dropbox, an application written in Python.

"Our work reveals the internal API used by Dropbox client and makes it straightforward to write a portable open-source Dropbox client," the paper states. "Additionally, we show how to bypass Dropbox's two-factor authentication and gain access to users' data."

The paper presents "new and generic techniques to reverse engineer frozen Python applications, which are not limited to just the Dropbox world," the developers wrote.

The researchers described in detail how they were able to unpack, decrypt and decompile Dropbox from scratch. And, once someone has de-compiled its source code, how "it is possible to study how Dropbox works in detail.

"We describe a method to bypass Dropbox's two-factor authentication and hijack Dropbox accounts. Additionally, generic techniques to intercept SSL data using code injection techniques and monkey patching are presented," the developers wrote in the paper.

The process they used included various code injection techniques and monkey-patching to intercept SSL data in a Dropbox client. They also used the techniques successfully to snoop on SSL data in other commercial products as well, they said.

The developers are hoping their white hat hacking prompts Dropbox to open source its platform so that it is no longer a "black box."

"We hope that our work inspires the security community to write an open-source Dropbox client, rene the techniques presented in this paper and conduct research into other cloud-based storage systems," they said.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed. His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.

See more by Lucas Mearian on Computerworld.com.

Read more about cloud security in Computerworld's Cloud Security Topic Center.

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Hands-on: Parallels Access runs your Mac apps on your iPad

Parallels is best known to Mac users as one of the handful of companies—including VMWare and a couple of others—that make apps enabling you to run Windows on your Mac. Now the company is entering a much more crowded niche: Its new iOS app Parallels Access lets you connect to a remote Mac from your iPad and so "run" Mac apps on your tablet. In doing so, it joins the likes of GoToMyPC, LogMeIn, TeamViewer HD, and SplashTop Remote Desktop, as well as VNC clients like Mocha VNC, among many, many others.

So if Parallels Access isn’t exactly unique in what it does, how does it expect to differentiate itself in that crowded field? By making remotely accessed Mac programs act as much like native iOS apps as possible. Based on my preliminary testing with the app, here’s how it works.

Installing Parallels Access is a simple, two-step process. First you install an iOS client via the App Store. From that client app, you log into your existing Parallels account or create a new one. You then install a Mac “agent” on your desktop or laptop and log into that same account from there; the Mac app must be running in order for the remote access to work. (The Mac installer is smart enough to check your system’s sleep settings and advise you whether you need to adjust them; if your Mac goes to sleep while you’re remotely accessing it from your iPad, you’ll be out of business.) There’s an Access agent for Windows machines, too, so you can control those from your iPad as well.

With those two bits of software in place, you launch the iPad app, which will then show you a list of the Macs that are registered to your account.

When you launch the iPad app, you first select the remote Mac you want to connect to.

Tap on the one you want and you’ll enter a Launchpad-like interface showing you a bunch of your Mac apps. (Which is to say it looks like a standard iOS home screen, but with Mac icons.)

After you connect to a remote Mac, Parallels Access shows you a Launchpad-like home screen of that Mac's apps.

Parallels says that, by default, this initial list shows the Mac apps you use most commonly, but you can add and delete apps as you see fit: Just tap the Edit button in the upper right corner to delete or the plus-sign (+) to add. There’s also a handy search field, which will find any app with your search string, not just those on that default home screen.

When you tap on one of the icons on that home screen, the Mac app opens smoothly; I noticed no lag between my taps and the app’s response. (That’s not always the case with this kind of remote access.) If you were near the Mac you’re connecting to, you’d see the app open in full-screen mode on your Mac’s display(s). You could type and move the cursor from your Mac input devices, but the interface would be zoomed in on the one app that’s open on your tablet.

Access isn’t just mirroring your Mac’s screen on your iPad: It’s overlaying its own interface on your OS X apps. That means you interact with Mac apps by tapping, tapping-and-holding, clicking, dragging, and so on. A regular one-finger tap on the iPad produces a single left-click on your Mac, a two-finger tap creates a right-click, a slide of your finger scrolls the screen, and so on.

On the right side of the screen, you’ll see a small toolbar with four icons on it. You can swipe over the toolbar left-to-right to hide it, then swipe in from right edge of the screen to have it reappear.

On the right side you get the Access toolbar; at the bottom, there's the app-switcher.

The top icon on that toolbar summons a Dock-like interface at the bottom of the screen, showing all of the apps that are currently open on your Mac. To switch to another app, you tap its icon there.

Below that on the toolbar there’s a Launchpad icon; you use that to summon that initial home screen with your Mac app icons; you can open new apps there.

The Settings bar along the bottom summons special keys or mouse pointers, expands the workspace, and more.

Next there’s the familiar gear icon for settings. Tap on that to control six settings:

Additional Keys (which lets you summon special keyboard keys, about which more below);Mouse Pointer (tap on that to get a mouse-click toolbar that makes it easier to effect left- or right-clicks);Desktop Mode (which gives you a fuller OS X desktop, including the top menubar and the Dock); Sound On/Off;Feedback; andHelp.

Finally, below that Settings icon, there’s a keyboard button that summons the Access keyboard. That keyboard is the standard iOS one, plus a set of special keys at the top: Escape; Tab; F1 through F12 keys; Delete; a button with a grid-like icon on it that, when tapped provides Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys; Shift; Ctrl; Alt; Command; and cursor arrow keys.

Access adds a row of special buttons on top of the standard iOS keyboard.

The Access keyboard doesn’t let you “chord” keys—in other words, you can’t use standard OS X keyboard combinations such as ?-B, ?-C, and so on. Instead, you must use the iOS-standard context menu (summoned by selecting text or whatever else you’re working on, depending on the app, then tapping the selection). On the plus side, you can use iPad dictation for input in your Mac apps.

Because you’re running OS X, you can run multiple apps at once, switching from one to the other using that app-switcher button in the toolbar. But because you’re in iOS, the Access interface is really optimized for running one app at a time. So if you need to hop among multiple apps, the Access interface could be frustrating.

Tapping on elements of an app’s interface—buttons in the Office ribbon, for example—works really well, in part because Parallels intelligently interprets taps that are close to buttons; you don’t have to hit them exactly.

While Parallels Access does indeed provide a nice, smooth iOS interface to Mac programs, that’s not to say the app does so uniquely enough to clearly distinguish itself from the other iPad apps that do much the same thing. For that final word (as well as word on whether and how well you can stream video or transfer files from your Mac to iPad), you’ll have to wait for our review.

Parallels Access will sell for an $80 annual subscription; you’ll need a separate subscription for each Mac (and PC) agent you install.

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70% of US residents have broadband access, study finds

IDG News Service - As of this past May, 70% of U.S. residents ages 18 and older access the Internet via high-speed broadband, although the rate of broadband adoption has been sluggish, according to survey results released Monday by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project.

Just 3% of U.S. residents access the Internet via dial-up, which is unchanged since August 2011, Pew found.

But while the number of people zipping along the "information superhighway" may be high at 70%, the percentage does not constitute a major shift in online behavior. Compared to the 66% of adults who said they had home broadband in April 2012, Monday's results show only "a small but statistically significant rise," the report said.

Access rates were more or less stagnant in previous years, too. In August 2011, 62% of adults had high-speed access. In May 2010, it was 66%.

The report points to several socioeconomic factors to explain the trend toward home broadband access.

"We've consistently found that age, education and household income are among the strongest factors associated with home broadband adoption," said Kathryn Zickuhr, the report's lead author, in a statement.

In keeping with previous research findings, groups with the highest rates of home broadband adoption continue to be college graduates, adults under age 50, adults living in households earning at least $50,000, and white people and adults living in urban or suburban areas, the report said.

The gap in broadband adoption rates between younger and older adults is large: 80% of adults ages 18-29 have high-speed broadband compared to 43% of seniors 65 and older.

The study includes data going as far back as 2000, showing that broadband adoption rates first surpassed dial-up rates between 2004 and 2005.

The study also took a look at smartphones, which have helped to provide an alternative form of home Internet access as their popularity has grown in recent years, authors said.

If the devices are included in the definition of broadband, they are also exacerbating the broadband gap between older and younger people, the report said.

Adding smartphone ownership to the mix, the percentage of young adults with broadband increases to 95%, while the access rate for seniors rises only moderately to 46%.

Smartphones are narrowing the gap, however, between some racial and ethnic groups. While black people and Latinos are less likely to have home broadband than white people, their use of smartphones nearly eliminates that difference, the report said.

Today, 56% of U.S. adults own some kind of smartphone, the report said.

The report is based on data from telephone interviews conducted between April and May of this year, among more than 2,200 adults, Pew said.

Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach's e-mail address is zach_miners@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Apple throttles iWork for iCloud access for new users

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Study: 70 percent of US residents have broadband access

As of this past May, 70 percent of U.S. residents ages 18 and older access the Internet via high-speed broadband, although the rate of broadband adoption has been sluggish, according to survey results released Monday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.

Just 3 percent of U.S. residents access the Internet via dialup, which is unchanged since August 2011, Pew found.

The Pew Research Center and American Life Project says that 70 percent of U.S. residents 18 years and older access the Internet via broadband.

But while the number of people zipping along the “information superhighway” may be high at 70 percent, the percentage does not constitute a major shift in online behavior. Compared to the 66 percent of adults who said they had home broadband in April 2012, Monday’s results show only “a small but statistically significant rise,” the report said.

Access rates were more or less stagnant in previous years too. In August 2011, 62 percent of adults had high-speed access. In May 2010, it was 66 percent.

The report points to several socioeconomic factors to explain the trend toward home broadband access.

“We’ve consistently found that age, education and household income are among the strongest factors associated with home broadband adoption,” said Kathryn Zickuhr, the report’s lead author, in a statement.

In keeping with previous research findings, groups with the highest rates of home broadband adoption continue to be college graduates, adults under age 50, adults living in households earning at least $50,000, and white people and adults living in urban or suburban areas, the report said.

The gap in broadband adoption rates between younger and older adults is large: 80 percent of adults ages 18-29 have high-speed broadband compared to 43 percent of seniors 65 and older.

The study includes data going as far back as 2000, showing that broadband adoption rates first surpassed dialup rates between 2004 and 2005.

The study also took a look at smartphones, which have helped to provide an alternative form of home Internet access as their popularity has grown in recent years, authors said.

If the devices are included in the definition of broadband, they are also exacerbating the broadband gap between older and younger people, the report said.

Adding smartphone ownership to the mix, the percentage of young adults with broadband increases to 95 percent, while the access rate for seniors rises only moderately to 46 percent.

Smartphones are narrowing the gap, however, between some racial and ethnic groups. While black people and Latinos are less likely to have home broadband than white people, their use of smartphones nearly eliminates that difference, the report said.

Today, 56 percent of U.S. adults own some kind of smartphone, the report said.

The report is based on data from telephone interviews conducted between April and May of this year, among more than 2,200 adults, Pew said.

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Senators want permanent ban on Internet access taxes

Two U.S. senators have introduced legislation that would permanently extend a current moratorium on Internet access taxes in the country.

The Internet Tax Freedom Forever Act, introduced Thursday, would also extend the U.S. ban on other taxes specific to the Internet. The legislation does not ban taxes, such as sales taxes, that can be levied on the Internet if they can also be levied on offline activities.

The legislation, introduced by Senators Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, and John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, would extend a temporary Internet-only tax ban that Congress passed in 1998 and extended three times. The moratorium, which Wyden originally pushed for, is scheduled to expire Nov. 1, 2014.

The original Internet Tax Freedom Act promoted Internet access across the country, Wyden said in a statement. Under the tax moratorium, “the Internet became a platform to facilitate global commerce, sparking nothing short of an economic revolution,” he said. “It facilitated the development and growth of the digital economy and has created new industries and the good-paying jobs that come along with them.”

Several companies and trade groups praised the legislation. “The legislation introduced today will provide a permanent and predictable tax environment for businesses to grow, and promote further broadband adoption in all parts of America,” Tony Russo, vice president of federal legislative affairs for T-Mobile USA, said in a statement.

Also on Thursday, a group of Internet and telecom companies, trade groups and consumer groups formed the Internet Tax Freedom Act Coalition to lobby for a permanent moratorium.

Coalition members include Amazon.com, AT&T, Comcast, CTIA, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, Time Warner Cable, T-Mobile, U.S. Telecom, and Verizon Communications.

Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service.
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Why Small Businesses Need to Spring for Business-Class Internet Access

Google is being accused of violating the FCCs Open Internet Order as a result of its policy toward servers. Essentially, if you run a server from a Google Fiber Internet connection, you’re technically violating the terms of service, and you could find your Internet access shut down. Google stands by that policy, but the reality is that this is only one of many reasons that small businesses should not run a server from a consumer-grade Internet connection.

The issue with Google Fiber stems from a clause in the terms of service that reads, “Unless you have a written agreement with Google Fiber permitting you to do so, you should not host any type of server using your Google Fiber connection.”

Google has been a proponent of net neutrality, but some were quick to note that Google seems to have changed teams now that it’s also in the Internet provider business. Google’s response to the FCC includes this explanation: “The server policy has been established to account for the congestion management and network security needs of Google Fiber’s network architecture, particularly given that Google Fiber does not impose data caps on its users.”

Bottom line: Google believes it has a right to ban someone from hosting a server on it’s Google Fiber network because of the potential impact it could have on the bandwidth for all of the rest of the customers. That seems reasonable.

You don’t really want to host your business server on a consumer Internet service anyway. Granted, Google Fiber delivers a 1Gbps connection for a very low cost compared to any other consumer or business service. However, Google Fiber is only available in a few select cities, and there are other reasons to choose a business-class Internet provider.

First, Google states explicitly that it doesn’t impose a bandwidth cap, but many consumer Internet services do. Comcast used to have a 250GB per month cap, but switched to a tiered-pricing plan last year for heavy users. The cap is now 300GB, after which Comcast charges $10 extra per month for each additional 50GB.

Another benefit of business-class Internet service is that you generally have a dedicated, static IP address, which makes it much easier to host and manage a server. Consumer Internet services use DHCP to randomly assign IP addresses, so your website or FTP server might be on one address today, and a different one tomorrow.

Most consumer Internet services block various TCP ports—for example port 25. It’s blocked as a measure to guard against or limit spam, based on the assumption that no consumer customer is hosting an email server (because it would violate the TOS). You want to have full access to all of the ports for your Internet access—including TCP port 25, so business-class Internet is the way to go.

Tech support is also different. Calling the consumer tech support line when you’re having an issue is typically an exercise in futility and frustration. If your business depends on the Internet connection, it can be that much more stressful. The technical support for a business-class account is generally more knowledgeable and more expedient, so you can minimize down time and keep your business online.

The operative word in the term “small and medium business” is “business”. In other words, regardless of whether your company has one employee, one hundred, or one thousand, it’s still a business, and it still needs to act like one. That is particularly true when it comes to choosing an Internet provider.

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The Guardian: NSA’s XKeyscore program has nearly limitless access to all Internet activity

The Guardian has detailed new revelations from NSA-leaker Edward Snowden about a program known as XKeyscore that has been described as the agency’s “widest-ranging” tool for online data collection.

PowerPoint training materials obtained by The Guardian show how analysts could use the system to mine sprawling agency databases consisting of a vast reservoir of data. At least 41 billion records were collected and stored in a single 30-day period in 2012, according to the report, which also says XKeyscore collects more than 20 terabytes of information daily, including emails, chats, social media interactions, and even browsing histories—all in real-time.

www.guardian.co.ukSearching emails was as easy as filling in a search field.

For example, with little more than an email address, the agency would be able to search “every email address seen in a session by both username and domain,” “every phone number seen in a session (eg address book entries or signature block)”, and “the webmail and chat activity to include username, buddy list, machine specific cookies etc.”

The PowerPoint documents also reveal that agents would have the ability to search through any individual’s email as long as they had an address. This would include “searches within bodies of emails, webpages and documents,” including “To, From, CC, BCC lines” and even the “Contact Us” pages on websites.

This adds validity to Snowden’s often disregarded claim that “I, sitting at my desk could wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email.”

www.guardian.co.ukA simple search field for finding Facebook communicaitons.

Beyond email, the technology would give the NSA the ability to rummage through social media activity. For example, authorities would have the ability to monitor Facebook chats by simply searching a Facebook user name and a date range into a simple search screen.

US authorities claim that no warrant is needed to intercept communications of non-US Citizens or if the communication is between an American and a foreign target. However, according to the report, analysts had—in the least—the technological ability to access any information from US persons, provided they had some identifying information such as an email or IP address without prior authorization.

Snowden’s leaks were hardly the first allegations of mass electronic surveillance, however the Prism leaks, along with these latest allegations, show how monitoring of the virutal world are far more extensive than most people could possibly imagine.

Evan lives in Brooklyn, NY and enjoys writing about what future may hold and taking long romantic walks on the beach.
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