So, the government has been monitoring our phone calls and emails, huh? Is anyone really that surprised??
Last week, Americans went bonkers over news from admitted whistleblower Edward Snowden of the PRISM program, a collaboration involving the NSA, FBI and nearly all the tech companies we interact with daily. It started back in 2007 and for the last 6 years, has given the government total access to our emails, phone conversations, online chats and more for the purpose of monitoring foreign and domestic threats.
Facebook, Google, Yahoo, AOL, YouTube, Apple and others have all allowed the government access to their servers (which includes all the information you’ve sent through those servers daily) by authority of the Attorney General and/or Director of National Intelligence.
So exactly what is all the hullabaloo about?
Americans are fearful that the government is prying into their personal lives and they don’t like it. But the reality is, literally trillions of bits of information pass through Internet servers daily, making it very difficult for the government to pinpoint Joe or Jane American and follow every intricate detail of their personal life.
PRISM has a filter in place that targets certain code words or phrases. Once that happens, the government needs a 51% certainty that someone is a potential threat before they zero in on an individual. But is this as horrible as it seems?
For many years, local and federal officials have had plenty of access to us. Surveillance cameras on outdoor street lights have been able to see who you’re holding hands with, or follow a car or a person from one end of a city to another. These cameras also exist inside most every transportation terminal, sports venue, ATM machine, or other public facility as well. This is nothing new. We’ve been being watched and monitored for years.
Unless someone is making terrorist plans that could be harmful to the United States of America, their information will simply blend in with the trillions of other bits of info that are harmless and innocent.
So the question remains: is the technology of PRISM necessary to keep all of us safe in these dangerous times, or is it an unnecessary breach of our privacy that should make us all outraged?
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