Inside Story Americas: NSA Leaks and US Democracy

We ask what recent spying revelations mean for democracy in the United States.

Inside Story Americas: Is Obama Going Beyond Orwellian?
We examine if American security measures are going too far.

Inside Story Americas: Public Safety or Privacy Intrusion?
We discuss if it is acceptable for the US government to access American citizens' personal data.

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'EU Shocked & Angry by Unaccountable US Surveillance'
The recent NSA leaks have awakened many Europeans to the "disturbing" privacy violations regularly committed by the US that their own governments facilitated and may have benefited from, Jim Killock, the executive director of Open Rights Group, told RT

US Prism Scandal: 'Security Is Not an End in Itself'
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: How much monitoring is too much and at what point does freedom become compromised? With its Prism spy program, the US has crossed the line.

Shortly before US President Barack Obama's visit to Berlin, Germans are troubled by questions regarding the extent to which the United States monitors Internet traffic worldwide. Is it true, as the media claim, that the United States can access and track virtually every form of communication on the Internet at the source? The Guardian and the Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) could gain direct access to and read user data with the so-called "Prism" program. An unnamed intelligence officer was quoted by the Washington Post as saying that the NSA could "quite literally … watch your ideas form as you type."

Internet giants like Facebook and Google were quick to issue denials, saying that they do not release any information without a court order. But doubts remain.

These reports are deeply disconcerting. When viewed in its entirety, this massive effort to acquire information, if it is true, would be dangerous.

On the weekend, President Obama reacted by saying that it is impossible to have 100 percent security and 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.

I don't share this view. The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is. In a democratic constitutional state, security is not an end in itself, but serves to secure freedom. » | A Commentary by German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger | Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Prism Exposed: Data Surveillance with Implications for the World

SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: The American intelligence director and the White House have finally confirmed what insiders have long known: The Obama administration is spying on the entire world. Politicians in Germany are demanding answers.

South of Utah's Great Salt Lake, the National Security Agency (NSA), aUnited States foreign intelligence service, keeps watch over one of its most expensive secrets. Here, on 100,000 square meters (1,100,000 square feet) near the US military's Camp Williams, the NSA is constructing enormous buildings to house superfast computers. All together, the project will cost around $2 billion (€1.5 billion) and the computers will be capable of storing a gigantic volume of data, at least 5 billion gigabytes. The energy needed to power the cooling system for the servers alone will cost $40 million a year.

Former NSA employees Thomas Drake and Bill Binney told SPIEGEL in March that the facility would soon store personal data on people from all over the world and keep it for decades. This includes emails, Skype conversations, Google searches, YouTube videos, Facebook posts, bank transfers -- electronic data of every kind.

"They have everything about you in Utah," Drake says. "Who decides whether they look at that data? Who decides what they do with it?" Binney, a mathematician who was previously an influential analyst at the NSA, calculates that the servers are large enough to store the entirety of humanity's electronic communications for the next 100 years -- and that, of course, gives his former colleagues plenty of opportunity to read along and listen in.

James Clapper, the country's director of national intelligence, has confirmed the existence of a large-scale surveillance program. PresidentBarack Obama further explained that Congress authorized the program -- but that American citizens are exempt from it.

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'Total Surveillance of Germans is Inappropriate'

On Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed through a spokesman that she plans to discuss the NSA's controversial data surveillance program with President Obama during his visit to Berlin next week. A spokesperson for the German Justice Ministry also said that talks are currently underway with US authorities. The discussions will include implications to Germany and "possible impairment of the rights of German citizens."

German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner has called for "clear answers" from the companies implicated in the document, and the German Green Party has demanded that the government investigate the circumstances of Prism immediately.

"Total surveillance of all German citizens by the NSA is completely disproportionate," Volker Beck, secretary of the Green Party group in parliament, said on Monday. The party has proposed that the topic be discussed at next week's parliamentary session.

Mormon Roots, International Reach

The program's Utah compound is full of security fences, watchdogs and surveillance cameras, as well as biometric identification system equipment. Two informants say the location for the server facility was by no means an accident. Utah is home to the largest number of Mormons in the world. This highly patriotic religious community sends its young members around the world as missionaries -- and many are then recruited by the Utah Army National Guard, whose 300th Military Intelligence Brigade employs 1,600 linguists. The NSA has access to these linguists at all times, and one insider believes they are used in "analyzing international telecommunications."

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Read the whole article here » | Marcel Rosenbach, Holger Stark and Jonathan Stock | Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein | Monday, June 10, 2013

Privacy vs Security: 'Obama Already Made Choice for Us'
President Obama has stepped in to defend a massive secret surveillance program after revelations America's been spying on its own people on a vast scale. Obama said people had to be aware there's a trade of between security and privacy. The project - called PRISM - run by the NSA tracked virtually every aspect of people's online life. The revelations sparked outrage abroad as Britain's GCHQ also implicated in the project. Loz Kaye, leader of the UK Pirate Party, thinks that the security web is ineffective due to its sheer scale.