Occupy Corporatism
by Susanne Posel
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have released a 4th edition report that details how 26 corporations stack-up to retaining privacy of users and securing private data.
This list is supposed to reveal “who has your back” and is protecting users from being spied on; however this list when compared with the facts presented by Edward Snowden, is really just a false security fallacy to lull the public into believing that these tech corporations care about maintaining integrity.
Categories of concern for the EFF include:
• Requires a warrant for content
• Tells users about government data requests
• Publishers transparency reports
• Publishers law enforcement guidelines
• Fights for users’ privacy rights in courts
• Fights for users’ privacy rights in Congress
According to the report: “[The] majority of the companies surveyed have made a formal commitment to inform users when their data was sought, a welcome safeguard that gives users the information they need to fight on their own.”
Among the corporations praised for maintaining customer privacy rights by the EFF are:
• Facebook
• Apple
• Google
• Twitter
• Dropbox
• Microsoft
• Sonic.net
• Twitter
• Yahoo
• Credo Mobile
Those corporations given “bad” scores were:
• Amazon
• AT&T
• Snapchat
However, this list provided by the EFF is contradictory to the facts that have been presented over the course of the Snowden revelations about how the National Security Agency (NSA) is in collusion with these very same tech corporations to share your private data with government agencies.
Under program PRISM (which extends as far back as 2007), the federal government has been data mining from tech corporations such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Youtube, Aol, Paltalk and Skype.
PRISM was created during the George W. Bush presidential administration and has expanded further by President Obama.
In fact, Microsoft, the first tech corporation to be brought onto the PRISM program, has also been contributing encrypted information to the NSA.
Along with this data, the NSA was given access to cloud storage systems and Skype video calls.
It has been reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) could request information with ease because the PRISM program “is a team sport!”
Documents obtained state that:
• Microsoft assisted the NSA in breaking encryption codes
• Pre-encryption access was obtained for email accounts for Outlook and Hotmail
• Microsoft cooperated with the FBI with SkyDrive which affected 250 million users
• Microsoft and the FBI Data Intercept Unit (DIU) created aliases for email accounts to gain access to more information on users
• After Microsoft purchased Skype, NSA had full access to the technology
Just after 9/11, the FBI began their data sharing relationship with Microsoft who gave unfettered access to surveying their customers to the federal government.
FBI agents were interested in customer email account information. Microsoft engineers were told to give over new user data to the FBI as it became available.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) has created an advantage by sporadically wiretapping online conversations at their whim with the FBI having the authority to force internet service providers (ISPs) to comply.
Robert Mueller, director of the FBI maintains that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter who offer instant messaging capabilities are a line of defense in online intelligence gathering and should be made to comply with federal intrusions.
Since 2011, the DOJ has had legal authorization to conduct conducting surveillance on customers of many internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and others with the DIB Cyber Pilot under the guise that to monitoring digital infrastructure serves to protect the US government from hackers.
Tim Clemente, former Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) counterterrorism agent, explains that government agencies “have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation.”
In fact, all conversations being had in America are intercepted and monitored without warrant in real time. Clement states that “no digital communication is secure” which includes:
• Phone calls
• Emails
• Online chats
All these communications are collected and stored for use at the discretion of the government.
Occupy Corporatism