{"id":39817,"date":"2013-06-07T08:17:23","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T07:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/obamas-unparalleled-spy-state\/39817\/"},"modified":"2013-06-07T08:17:23","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T07:17:23","slug":"obamas-unparalleled-spy-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/obamas-unparalleled-spy-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama\u2019s Unparalleled Spy State"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n <\/p>\n
\n
\n

US President Barack Obama walks down the West Wing Colonnade in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, June 5, 2013. Obama called for “meaningful reform” and respect for universal rights in Bahrain, during talks with Crown Prince Salman at <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

June 6, 2013<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
\n<\/em> \u00a0| <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Like this article?<\/p>\n

Join our email list:<\/p>\n

Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email.<\/h3>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Now we know for sure: The Obama administration has presided over the most thorough expansion of the domestic surveillance state of any U.S. presidency. Even as the nation was still absorbing the news, broken by Glenn Greenwald<\/a>\u00a0at the Guardian on Wednesday night, that the National Security Agency has been routinely collecting phone call records for millions of Americans, the Washington Post and the Guardian published articles revealing even broader government snooping powers:<\/a>\u00a0Since 2007, the NSA and the FBI have had the power to watch nearly every aspect of our online life as well. <\/p>\n

\n

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person\u2019s movements and contacts over time. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The nine companies are Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple. (PalTalk, according to the Post, \u201chosted significant traffic during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war.\u201d) <\/p>\n

The program is code-named PRISM, and while it was created during the administration of George W. Bush, the Post reports that it has experienced \u201cexponential growth\u201d under Obama. <\/p>\n

A blistering, brutal editorial<\/a>\u00a0published by the New York Times\u00a0before\u00a0the Washington Post article broke noted the contradiction between Obama\u2019s words and deeds, recalling \u201cwhen he said in 2007 that the Bush administration\u2019s surveillance policy \u2018puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.\u2019\u201d The Washington Post story, in conjuction with the Guardian give the lie to such rhetoric. The Obama administration has trampled over the liberties we cherish. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing to suspect and assume, as many privacy experts and government watchdogs have for years, that government intelligence agencies enjoy essentially unlimited access to all our electronic communications. It\u2019s another to have it confirmed in black and white. It\u2019s fair to say that very few of the people who voted for Barack Obama expected that one of his legacies was the effective end of privacy from government snooping. <\/p>\n

But even this dark surveillance cloud has its silver lining. <\/p>\n

First, kudos have to go to whoever leaked the information about both of the secret surveillance programs to the press. In a climate in which the government has made clear its intent to prosecute both whistle-blowers and the press, the decision to go public took guts. <\/p>\n

Second, there\u2019s a notable absence in the list of nine Internet companies participating in the PRISM program: Twitter. The Washington Post article reports that Twitter \u201chas cultivated a reputation for aggressive defense of its users\u2019 privacy.\u201d There is now some real meat on the bones of that reputation. Can we hope for other Internet companies to follow Twitter\u2019s example? <\/p>\n

UPDATE: Google, Facebook, and Apple are all denying<\/a>\u00a0that the government has \u201cdirect access\u201d to their servers. <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US President Barack Obama walks down the West Wing Colonnade in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, June 5, 2013. Obama called for “meaningful reform” and respect for universal rights in Bahrain, during talks with Crown Prince Salman at June 6, 2013 \u00a0| Like this article? Join our email list: Stay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-39817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}