What is known about NSA's PRISM program

In June last year the Snowden-leaks started with the disclosure of the PRISM-program. For many people it stands for NSA surveillance in general because they often have still no idea what PRISM is actually about.

Therefore, this article presents a wrap up of almost everything we know about the PRISM program, combining information from my earlier postings and from other media and government sources.

The famous internal NSA presentation about PRISM consists of 41 slides. Edward Snowden initially asked The Washington Post to publish the full slide deck, but the paper refused and so only 4 were subsequently published by The Guardian. A few other slides were revealed later on. In total 13 slides have been published and 4 were incidentally or partially shown on television.

All of them are shown here, in an order that probably comes closest to the original presentation. The slides have a number which is only for reference. If new slides of this PRISM presentation become available, they will be added here...

http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2014/04/what-is-known-about-nsas-prism-program.html

In response to NSA revelations, the internet’s engineers set out to PRISM-proof the net

Greatly disturbed by the recent revelations of mass internet surveillance, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) have announced plans to ramp up online security. You may never have heard of them, but the IETF are the creators and engineers of the internet’s architecture. Is there a technical solution to the problem of mass surveillance?

For the IETF, Edward Snowden’s revelations were “a wake-up call,” said Jari Arkko, the task force’s chair. Arkko spoke at this week’s UN-initiated Internet Governance Forum in Bali, Indonesia. Surprised by the scale and tactics of surveillance, Arkko stated the engineers are “looking at technical changes that will raise the bar for monitoring.”

“Perhaps the notion that internet is by default insecure needs to change,” he said. The IETF’s will is there, and Arkko believes significant technical fixes “just might be possible.”

Technical, not political...

http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/response-nsa-revelations-internet’s-engineers-set-out-prism-proof-net

NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program

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. Documents describing the previously undisclosed program, obtained by The Washington Post, show the breadth of U.S. electronic surveillance capabilities in the wake of a widely publicized controversy over warrantless wiretapping of U.S. domestic telephone communications in 2005. These slides, annotated by The Washington Post, represent a selection from the overall document, and certain portions are redacted. Read related article...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/