Terrorists know that communicating by phone is dangerous for them. So they have shifted to the Internet. Thus, the NSA now hunts for terrorist threats hidden in the flood of social media data, leaked documents show.
PRISM (for Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management) collects digital photos, stored data, file transfers, e-mail, chat services, videos, and video conferencing from nine Internet companies, according to a “top secret” NSA document describing the program and posted on the Washington Post website. By law, the program is confined to “foreign targets located outside the United States,” says a statement by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Internet data have been provided under a government order by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple, according to the leaked NSA document. While the telephone metadata program was widely known in Congress, PRISM’s existence seemed to take many lawmakers by surprise.
