PRISM Is Just Part Of A Much Larger, Scarier Government Surveillance Program

Saturday, June 15, 2013
By Paul Martin

Stephen Braun, Anne Flaherty, Jack Gillum, and Matt Apuzo
BusinessInsider.com
June 15, 2013

What makes Prism shine? National Security Agency’s megadata collection from Internet pipeline

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the months and early years after 9/11, FBI agents began showing up at Microsoft Corp. more frequently than before, armed with court orders demanding information on customers.

Around the world, government spies and eavesdroppers were tracking the email and Internet addresses used by suspected terrorists. Often, those trails led to the world’s largest software company and, at the time, largest email provider.

The agents wanted email archives, account information, practically everything, and quickly. Engineers compiled the data, sometimes by hand, and delivered it to the government.

Often there was no easy way to tell if the information belonged to foreigners or Americans. So much data was changing hands that one former Microsoft employee recalls that the engineers were anxious about whether the company should cooperate.

Inside Microsoft, some called it “Hoovering” — not after the vacuum cleaner, but after J. Edgar Hoover, the first FBI director, who gathered dirt on countless Americans.

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