NSA secretly taps into Google, Yahoo networks

Are we becoming a police state? With our prisons overflowing and, in many states, police officers shaking down innocent citizens for money (see this article from USA Today) in a process called “churning”, how much further do we have to go before a majority of Americans stand up and say “enough is enough”?

The U.S. government claims that because of all these intrusions into our private lives, and with the increasing the power of Supreme-Court-empowered (and emboldened) state and local police, we have been safe from terrorism since 2001 – not counting the Boston Marathon bombing last spring. I wonder if this thin veil of safety is worth the intrusion into our private lives and private companies, or the abridging of some of our civil liberties guaranteed to us by a constitution now under attack by both parties;  How much further can we let the government go before it becomes the terrorist we fear most of all? Samuel Johnson once said: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Indeed.

Read the following and give us your thoughts:

NSA secretly taps into Google, Yahoo networks to collect information, say leaked documents

The NSA intercepts millions of pieces of Google and Yahoo user information each day by tapping into the links between servers, The Washington Post reports. According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the agency secretly exploits the data links in Google and Yahoo’s global networks through a project called MUSCULAR, allegedly operated jointly with the GCHQ (which was accused earlier this year of snagging data from fiber optic cables). A January 9th document says that in the preceding 30 days, collectors had processed over 181 million pieces of information, including both metadata and the actual contents of communications.

The government can already request information from phone or data through the FISA Amendments Act, but this data collection would ostensibly take place without Google and Yahoo even being aware of it. Google told the Post that it had not known about the collection and was “troubled by allegations of the government intercepting traffic between our data centers.” Sources close to Google reportedly “exploded in profanity” when shown the drawing above, saying “I hope you publish this.” At the time of the initial revelations about PRISM’s internet-monitoring capabilities, one slide suggested direct data collection from servers.

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