When the Washington Post and The Guardian reported that US Government is monitoring the data of users with the assistance of some top tech companies, the news spread like wildfire as it involves numerous multinational corporations like Apple, Google, Yahoo and others. According to the report, internal documents have revealed that National Security Agency (NSA) is obtaining users’ data from nine US-based tech companies under a secret program called PRISM. The data that NSA acquires from these companies comprises of voice chats, emails, videos, social networking activities, pictures and lots more. Here is an excerpt from the original report from the Washington Post:
“Through a top-secret program authorized by federal judges working under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S. intelligence community can gain access to the servers of nine Internet companies for a wide range of digital data.”
It was also asserted in the report that NSA acquires this data directly from the servers of the company:
“Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.””
In response to this earth shattering report, Apple declared that the company is not aware of any secret program known as PRISM and they do not give government agencies access to user data without court orders.
Spokesman of Apple said that, “We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.”
On the other hand, commenting on the secret program of NSA, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said that PRISM has proved quite successful in preventing the terrorist attacks during the past few years:
“Within the last few years, this program was used to stop a terrorist attack in the United States. We know that. It’s important. It fills in a little seam that we have,” Rogers said. “And it’s used to make sure that there is not an international nexis to any terrorism event if there may be one ongoing. So in that regard, it is a very valuable thing.”
This statement indicates that the reports of Washington Post and The Guardian are true to an extent. However, keeping a check on every voice call, picture, email, video and other data by the US government without bringing it into the knowledge of users is serious violation of consumer privacy.
Source: iPhoneinCanada
Photo: iPhoneinCanada
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