https://www.constitution.org/shad4816.htm

The Shawdow Government

Shadow Finance

Some of the best indications that the Shadow Government is not centered in the financial sector are the things it has to do to finance itself. Shadow Government is expensive. We can identify the main sources of its revenue:

(1) Black budgets. This is the core of its operations, but is not enough to secure its control over the country and the world.

(2) Drug trade. It has seized control of the major part of the illegal traffic in addictive substances, in part by using the organs of law enforcement to eliminate competition, and by gaining control of the money and the ways it gets re-introduced into the economy.

(3) Raiding financial institutions. This is what was done with the S&Ls, and is being done, more slowly, with the banks. It involves several aspects: diversion of the funds, seizure of smaller institutions by a few large ones under Shadow Government control, with the seizure financed by the taxpayers, and acquisition under distressed prices of the assets of those institutions, many of which are well-positioned business enterprises that give the Shadow Government both control of the key enterprises in most business sectors and sources of revenue. The Savings & Loan raid was used to finance a major expansion of the Shadow Government. However, it is not a method that can be repeated.

(4) Public authorities. These are quasi- governmental enterprises that control substantial assets, often taxpayer-subsidized, without effective accountability. They include housing, port, energy, water, transportation, and educational authorities.<6To this might also be added various utilities, and both public and publicly-regulated private monopolies, like local telephone and cable companies. They are also a major source of government contracts.

(5) Government contracts. Major source of diverted funds, but must often be shared with others involved.

(6) Arms trade. Another major source of funds, both direct and diverted. But requires payoffs to local officials.

>>5556652

Shadow Control

The problem with secret government is that to remain secret, it cannot involve too many people who are aware of the situation. The more that become involved, the greater the chance that some of them who retain some sense of honor might defect. An occasional defector can be disabled, killed or discredited, but a flood of them could be disastrous. That is what brought down the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union.

Shadow control therefore consists largely of the placement of shadow agents in key positions in all of the institutions that are to be controlled. Since they cannot reveal their true role, they are also somewhat constrained in the actions they can take. What they do has to fit their jobs and not conflict in an obvious way with the mission of the organization, even if they head it. Some of the main targeted institutions are the following:

(1) Top and key lower positions in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Key judges, especially presiding judges who assign cases.

(2) Staff positions under the top positions, such as the congressional staff members who really run Congress.

(3) Intelligence agencies. The CIA<7>, NSA and various military intelligence divisions. Among their functions are death squads that eliminate troublesome persons, although they usually avoid doing that to more prominent ones. They also have developed mind control techniques that can be used to mess up the minds of people they want to discredit or disable.<8Actually, almost every department of government has an intelligence function, and that function is the Shadow Government's main point of control of the department.

(4) Military organizations, law enforcement, and taxing agencies, especially the IRS. Not only federal, but also state and local, at least in the major cities. The IRS and other agencies are used to harass persons considered troublesome, and sometimes to prosecute them on trumped up charges, in which evidence is planted or manufactured and government witnesses perjure themselves.

(5) Major banks, insurance companies, pension funds, holding companies, utilities, public authorities, contractors, manufacturers, distributors, transport firms, security services, credit reporting services. Forbidden by law from maintaining dossiers on citizens not the subject of criminal investigation, the agencies get around the restriction by using contractors to maintain the data for them, and have amazingly detailed data on almost everyone. When you hire one of the major security services, you are turning over the keys to your premises to the shadow government.

(6) Major media. Newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations. Together, they control the National Election Service, which in turn controls the outcome of computerized elections.<9They suppress coverage of certain subjects, and are the channel for the Shadow Government's propaganda and disinformation campaigns. A major part of the budget of the CIA is for film and video production. They aren't making training films.

(7) Communications networks. Telephone, telegraph, cable and satellite. The Shadow Government can bug any communication they wish, without bothering with a court order, and they regularly monitor dissidents and other key figures. Major holes in their control here are the Internet and public-key encryption, which the Shadow Government is trying to suppress. Although the Internet can be monitored, it cannot be effectively controlled, and it is emerging as a major threat to Shadow control.

(8) Organized crime. Despite occasional convictions, they are now mostly treated as a profit center and as the executors of the dirty jobs. They are also the providers of vices for the corrupt members of government, which vices are also used to blackmail and control people.

(9) Education. Universities and public education. Universities are the least effectively controlled components, but still important, largely for recruitment. Main aim here is to divert student activists into unproductive channels, or to get students so involved in careerism that they ignore the important issues.

(10) Civic, political, and labor organizations. The two major political parties. Political action committees. League of Women Voters. Trade and professional associations, such as the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association. Labor unions.

(11) International organizations. The United Nations, NATO, the IMF. Multinational corporations.

(12) Governmental and nongovernmental institutions of other countries. We are doing many of the same things there that are being done in the United States, especially in the more advanced countries.

>>5556654

Restoring Constitutional Governance

The restoration of constitutional governance need not require a violent revolution, and we should avoid violence if possible. It can be brought about in much the way it happened in the Soviet Union. This involves several elements:

(1) Exposure ("glasnost"). The Shadow Government, even more than the old Soviet regime, depends on secrecy. Uncover it and it loses most of its power. We need to end black budgets, require the declassification of most classified documents, especially those pertaining to UFOs and aliens, and adopt and enforce sunshine laws to require full disclosure of not just meetings and agreements among officials, but also among major organizations of all kinds which may exercise an undue influence on political decisions. We must also require independent audits of all such organizations.

(2) Restructuring ("perestroika"). We need to enforce strengthened anti-trust laws to break up large enterprises into many competing firms, not just two or three, and forbid interlocking directorates, beginning with the broadcast media and the press. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies need to be broken up into several competing ones, which can serve as effective checks on abuses by one another.

(2) Infiltration and defection. We need to get patriots inside key organizations and encourage insiders to become patriots. The most important are military and law enforcement organizations, whose members must be conditioned to come over to the side of the people if there is a confrontation. We must also provide effective protection for whistleblowers.

(3) Harassment. Lawsuits. Liens. Freedom of Information Act requests. Surveillance of principals. Local prosecution of federal agents.

(4) Local organization and publicity. Revive the constitutional Militia on the Swiss model<12>, set up independent investigation teams, alternative newspapers, talk radio, alert networks. We need to inform the public on what is happening, and to reach those who now are all too willing to trust the government to protect them.

(5) Civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance. Protest demonstrations. Tax protests. Defiance of unconstitutional laws. Refusal of juries to convict.<13>

(6) Armed resistance. This must involve non- provocative, but firm, defense of persons from illegal abuses, and exclusion of illegal governmental actions from local areas, county by county, state by state, with insistence on constitutional compliance.

(7) Transition plan. The oligarchy cannot be expected to come up with a plan for an orderly return to constitutional governance. The process must be conducted carefully, to avoid a disastrous collapse.<14We will need some constitutional amendments, to make legal some of the things the national government can do best. The government needs to end budget deficits and acquire the stock of the Federal Reserve.<15>

Author: James BamfordJames Bamford

security

03.15.12

https://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff-nsadatacenter/

The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

Once it's operational, the Utah Data Center will become, in effect, the NSA's cloud. The center will be fed data collected by the agency's eavesdropping satellites, overseas listening posts, and secret monitoring rooms in telecom facilities throughout the US. All that data will then be accessible to the NSA's code breakers, data-miners, China analysts, counterterrorism specialists, and others working at its Fort Meade headquarters and around the world. Here's how the data center appears to fit into the NSA's global puzzle.—J.B.

SPY NETWORK

1 Geostationary satellites

Four satellites positioned around the globe monitor frequencies carrying everything from walkie-talkies and cell phones in Libya to radar systems in North Korea. Onboard software acts as the first filter in the collection process, targeting only key regions, countries, cities, and phone numbers or email.

2 Aerospace Data Facility, Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado

Intelligence collected from the geostationary satellites, as well as signals from other spacecraft and overseas listening posts, is relayed to this facility outside Denver. About 850 NSA employees track the satellites, transmit target information, and download the intelligence haul.

3 NSA Georgia, Fort Gordon, Augusta, Georgia

Focuses on intercepts from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Codenamed Sweet Tea, the facility has been massively expanded and now consists of a 604,000-square-foot operations building for up to 4,000 intercept operators, analysts, and other specialists.

4 NSA Texas, Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio

Focuses on intercepts from Latin America and, since 9/11, the Middle East and Europe. Some 2,000 workers staff the operation. The NSA recently completed a $100 million renovation on a mega-data center here—a backup storage facility for the Utah Data Center.

5 NSA Hawaii, Oahu

Focuses on intercepts from Asia. Built to house an aircraft assembly plant during World War II, the 250,000-square-foot bunker is nicknamed the Hole. Like the other NSA operations centers, it has since been expanded: Its 2,700 employees now do their work aboveground from a new 234,000-square-foot facility.

6 Domestic listening posts

The NSA has long been free to eavesdrop on international satellite communications. But after 9/11, it installed taps in US telecom "switches," gaining access to domestic traffic. An ex-NSA official says there are 10 to 20 such installations.

7 Overseas listening posts

According to a knowledgeable intelligence source, the NSA has installed taps on at least a dozen of the major overseas communications links, each capable of eavesdropping on information passing by at a high data rate.

8 Utah Data Center, Bluffdale, Utah

At a million square feet, this $2 billion digital storage facility outside Salt Lake City will be the centerpiece of the NSA's cloud-based data strategy and essential in its plans for decrypting previously uncrackable documents.

9 Multiprogram Research Facility, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Some 300 scientists and computer engineers with top security clearance toil away here, building the world's fastest supercomputers and working on cryptanalytic applications and other secret projects.

10 NSA headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland

Analysts here will access material stored at Bluffdale to prepare reports and recommendations that are sent to policymakers. To handle the increased data load, the NSA is also building an $896 million supercomputer center here.

Before yottabytes of data from the deep web and elsewhere can begin piling up inside the servers of the NSA's new center, they must be collected. To better accomplish that, the agency has undergone the largest building boom in its history, including installing secret electronic monitoring rooms in major US telecom facilities. Controlled by the NSA, these highly secured spaces are where the agency taps into the US communications networks, a practice that came to light during the Bush years but was never acknowledged by the agency. The broad outlines of the so-called warrantless-wiretapping program have long been exposed—how the NSA secretly and illegally bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was supposed to oversee and authorize highly targeted domestic eavesdropping; how the program allowed wholesale monitoring of millions of American phone calls and email. In the wake of the program's exposure, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which largely made the practices legal. Telecoms that had agreed to participate in the illegal activity were granted immunity from prosecution and lawsuits. What wasn't revealed until now, however, was the enormity of this ongoing domestic spying program.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/panel-recommends-far-reaching-nsa-reforms/

Panel recommends far-reaching NSA reforms

By Jake Miller

December 18, 2013 / 4:49 PM / CBS News

In an effort to revive public confidence in the nation’s embattled intelligence services, the White House on Wednesday released a report suggesting far-reaching changes to the National Security Agency’s controversial data collection programs.

The report, offered by the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, was commissioned by President Obama following the firestorm of controversy that erupted when former government contractor Edward Snowden disclosed many of the NSA’s surveillance programs, including one that gathers the telephone records of nearly all Americans, in June.

Among the 46 changes the task force recommended is a provision that would strip the NSA of the phone-records database it currently maintains and hand over control of that database to a third party or to the telephone companies that provided it.

“The current storage by the government of bulk meta-data creates potential risks to public trust, personal privacy, and civil liberty,” the report says.

One of the other recommendations in the report would create a new oversight process to determine the wisdom and efficacy of any U.S. surveillance of foreign leaders and foreign publics, a change likely spurred by the outcry from U.S. allies about overseas surveillance.

“Those involved in the process should consider whether (1) surveillance is motivated by especially important national security concerns or by concerns that are less pressing and (2) surveillance would involve leaders of nations with whom we share fundamental values and interests or leaders of other nations,” the report states.

The report also recommends the director of the NSA be made a Senate-confirmed position, and it says the administration should give “serious consideration” to the idea of making the head of the NSA a civilian position. Currently, that hat is worn by the head of the U.S. military’s Cyber Command unit.

>>5557137

The report’s recommendations also include some big changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court, which oversees the government’s requests for surveillance authority. One recommendation would create a “Public Interest Advocate” to push back against the government’s case for expanded spying authority. Currently, the court only hears the government’s case, but some have said the injection of an adversarial presence could prevent overreach. The report also recommends the power to appoint FISA judges be divided among the members of the Supreme Court, rather than resting solely with the Chief Justice.

The report released Wednesday, while extensive, had been “scrubbed” to ensure that no classified material would be released, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday. The five members of the panel unanimously offered the recommendations in the report.

Carney said Wednesday that the report was born out of a desire to “make sure we’re not gathering intelligence because we can, but because we must.”

Since the controversy over the NSA’s data-gathering began mounting in June, the administration has hewed to a two-fold message, promising to address concerns about whether U.S. spying practices had overstepped their constitutional boundaries while maintaining that many of the data-collection programs under scrutiny provide a real boon to the nation’s security.

In a press release accompanying the report on Wednesday, the White House again affirmed the president’s view that the U.S. should “use its intelligence collection capabilities in a way that optimally protects our national security while supporting our foreign policy, respecting privacy and civil liberties, maintaining the public trust, and reducing the risk of unauthorized disclosure."

Carney said the White House “felt compelled” to release the report on Wednesday given the “inaccurate reporting” among some media outlets previewing its release. The overall review convened by the president in the wake of the NSA programs’ disclosure will not be finished until January.

The report will be one potential source of ideas on how to reform the U.S. intelligence apparatus, but it will not be the only source – the president met Tuesday with CEOs of technology companies, and he is likely to factor their concerns, along with the concerns of other interested parties, into his final analysis.

Mr. Obama will be studying the report’s findings during his upcoming vacation in Hawaii, Carney said Wednesday, and he will consult with other pertinent parties as necessary. He could speak to the report’s findings on January 28 at his annual State of the Union address, Carney said, but that will not preclude him from addressing it publicly before then.

Following the conclusion of their report, the five members of the task force met with the president Wednesday morning. Carney said Mr. Obama is “grateful” to the panelists for their hard work.

The report’s release comes only two days after a federal judge, Richard Leon, dealt a heavy blow to the government’s legal defense of the NSA’s mass data-collection, describing the program in his opinion as “almost Orwellian” and arguing it violates the Constitution’s protection against undue search and seizure.

Everything you need to know about PRISM

A cheat sheet for the NSA's unprecedented surveillance programs

By T.C. Sottek and Janus Kopfstein on July 17, 2013 01:36 pm

Everything you need to know about PRISM

A cheat sheet for the NSA's unprecedented surveillance programs

By T.C. Sottek and Janus Kopfstein on July 17, 2013 01:36 pm

Since September 11th, 2001, the United States government has dramatically increased the ability of its intelligence agencies to collect and investigate information on both foreign subjects and US citizens. Some of these surveillance programs, including a secret program called PRISM, capture the private data of citizens who are not suspected of any connection to terrorism or any wrongdoing.

In June, a private contractor working for Booz Allen Hamilton leaked classified presentation slides that detailed the existence and the operations of PRISM: a mechanism that allows the government to collect user data from companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, and others. While much of the program — and the rest of the NSA’s surveillance efforts — are still shrouded in secrecy, more details are coming to light as the public, as well as its advocates and representatives, pressure the government to come clean about domestic spying.

June 6th, 2013

PRISM is revealed in leaked slides: The Washington Post and The Guardian obtain a leaked 41-slide security presentation. Both publications say that according to the slides, PRISM is considered a highly classified program that allows the National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation to retrieve data directly from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple.

Companies deny knowledge and participation in PRISM: While the Post and the Guardian allege based on the leak that the NSA had direct access to the servers of Microsoft, Google, Apple, and others, spokespeople representing the companies deny involvement in the program, let alone knowledge of it.

US national intelligence director responds: Following the outbreak of the PRISM story, the US national intelligence director, James Clapper, release multiple statements regarding the leak. Clapper downplays the scandal, asking the public to simply trust that the agency respects civil liberties.

June 7th, 2013

>>5557174

UK Government allegedly involved in PRISM: The Guardian reports that the UK government is also involved in the PRISM program, and that the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been able to view private internet user-data since 2010 under the NSA’s program.

President Obama responds: The president attempts to deflect outrage about the PRISM program, claiming that Congress has known about it and approve it for years, but says he welcomes debate.

June 9th, 2013

Whistleblower reveals himself: The man responsible for the leak, 29-year-old Booz Allen Hamilton contractor Edward Snowden, reveals himself. He describes himself as a whistleblower, and in refuge in Hong Kong, says he does not expect to see home again.

June 11th, 2013

Public pressure results in action from Congress: Amid mounting public concern, widespread media reports, and interest from lawmakers in the leak, a bipartisan group of eight US senators announce a bill to declassify the court opinions that allow the NSA to conduct PRISM surveillance, as well as the phone records program that leaked days before PRISM went public.

June 18th, 2013

Government defends surveillance programs: NSA director, General Keith Alexander, tells Congress that "over 50" terrorist plots were stopped by surveillance efforts since 9/11. Meanwhile, President Obama defends the NSA’s program in an interview on the Charlie Rose program, but offers no new information about PRISM.

The what

What the hell is PRISM? PRISM is a tool used by the US National Security Agency (NSA) to collect private electronic data belonging to users of major internet services like Gmail, Facebook, Outlook, and others. It’s the latest evolution of the US government’s post-9/11 electronic surveillance efforts, which began under President Bush with the Patriot Act, and expanded to include the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) enacted in 2006 and 2007.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about how PRISM works, but the basic idea is that it allows the NSA to request data on specific people from major technology companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and others. The US government insists that it is only allowed to collect data when given permission by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Why is PRISM a big deal?

Classified presentation slides detailing aspects of PRISM were leaked by a former NSA contractor. On June 6th, The Guardian and The Washington Post published reports based on the leaked slides, which state that the NSA has "direct access" to the servers of Google, Facebook, and others. In the days since the leak, the implicated companies have vehemently denied knowledge of and participation in PRISM, and have rejected allegations that the US government is able to directly tap into their users' data.

Both the companies and the government insist that data is only collected with court approval and for specific targets. As The Washington Post reported, PRISM is said to merely be a streamlined system — varying between companies — that allows them to expedite court-approved data collection requests. Because there are few technical details about how PRISM operates, and because of the fact that the FISA court operates in secret, critics are concerned about the extent of the program and whether it violates the constitutional rights of US citizens.

How was PRISM created?

As The Washington Post reported, The Protect America Act of 2007 led to the creation of a secret NSA program called US-984XN — also known as PRISM. The program is said to be a streamlined version of the same surveillance practices that the US was conducting in the years following 9/11, under President George W. Bush’s "Terrorist Surveillance Program."

The Protect America Act allows the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to explain in a classified document how the US will collect intelligence on foreigners overseas each year, but does not require specific targets or places to be named. As the Post reports, once the plan is approved by a federal judge in a secret order, the NSA can require companies like Google and Facebook to send data to the government, as long as the requests meet the classified plan's criteria.

>>5557194

Who is responsible for leaking PRISM?

Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old intelligence contractor formerly employed by the NSA, CIA, and Booz Allen Hamilton, confessed responsibility for leaking the PRISM documents. He revealed himself on June 9th, three days after reports on PRISM were published; in an interview with The Guardian, Snowden said, "I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things," and claimed he was motivated by civic duty to leak classified information.

Snowden left the United States prior to leaking the documents in order to avoid capture, taking refuge in Hong Kong — where he stayed until June 23rd. With the assistance of WikiLeaks, Snowden fled Hong Kong for Moscow, and has requested asylum in Ecuador, Russia, and other countries. He is still residing in a Moscow airport, waiting to be granted asylum.

" "

What does the NSA collect?

While PRISM has been the most talked-about story to come out of Snowden’s leaks, the disclosures have shed light on a vast array of NSA surveillance programs. Broadly speaking, these can be split into two categories: "upstream" wiretaps, which pull data directly from undersea telecommunications cables, and efforts like PRISM, which acquire communications from US service providers. One of the slides in the leaked PRISM presentation instructs that analysts "should use both" of these sources.

NSA programs collect two kinds of data: metadata and content. Metadata is the sensitive byproduct of communications, such as phone records that reveal the participants, times, and durations of calls; the communications collected by PRISM include the contents of emails, chats, VoIP calls, cloud-stored files, and more. US officials have tried to allay fears about the NSA’s indiscriminate metadata collection by pointing out that it doesn’t reveal the contents of conversations. But metadata can be just as revealing as content — internet metadata includes information such as email logs, geolocation data (IP addresses), and web search histories. Because of a decades-old law, metadata is also far less well-protected than content in the US.

"NSA programs collect two kinds of data: metadata and content"

>>5557211

A leaked court order provided by Snowden showed that Verizon is handing over the calling records and telephony metadata of all its customers to the NSA on an "ongoing, daily basis." Mass collection of internet metadata began under a Bush-era program called "Stellarwind," which was first revealed by NSA whistleblower William Binney. The program was continued for two years under the Obama administration, but has since been discontinued and replaced with a host of similar programs with names like "EvilOlive" and "ShellTrumpet."

How does the NSA collect data?

Many crucial details on how and under what circumstances the NSA collects data are still missing. Legally speaking, surveillance programs rely on two key statutes, Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) and Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The former authorizes the collection of communications content under PRISM and other programs, while the latter authorizes the collection of metadata from phone companies such as Verizon and AT&T. However, multiple reports and leaked documents indicate the statutes have been interpreted in secret by the FISA intelligence courts to grant much broader authority than they were originally written to allow. They also indicate that the FISA courts only approve the NSA’s collection procedures, and individual warrants for specific targets are not required.

""Inadvertently acquired" communications can still be retained and analyzed for up to five years"

An analyst starts by inputting "selectors" (search terms) into a system like PRISM, which then "tasks" information from other collection sites, known as SIGADs (Signals Intelligence Activity Designators). SIGADs have both classified and unclassified code names, and are tasked for different types of data — one called NUCLEON gathers the contents of phone conversations, while others like MARINA store internet metadata.

Leaked documents show that under the agency’s targeting and "minimization" rules, NSA analysts can not specifically target someone "reasonably believed" to be a US person communicating on US soil. According to The Washington Post, an analyst must have at least "51 percent" certainty their target is foreign. But even then, the NSA’s "contact chaining" practices — whereby an analyst collects records on a target’s contacts, and their contacts’ contacts — can easily cause innocent parties to be caught up in the process.

The rules state the analyst must take steps to remove data that is determined to be from "US persons," but even if they are not relevant to terrorism or national security, these "inadvertently acquired" communications can still be retained and analyzed for up to five years — and even given to the FBI or CIA — under a broad set of circumstances. Those include communications that are "reasonably believed to contain evidence of a crime that has been, is being, or is about to be committed," or that contain information relevant to arms proliferation or cybersecurity. If communications are encrypted, they can be kept indefinitely.

>>5557215

So, what now?

In the weeks since the PRISM documents leaked, a widespread international public debate about the United States government’s surveillance and spying programs has engulfed the NSA, Congress, and the Obama administration in controversy. While outspoken supporters of NSA surveillance in Congress and the White House —including President Obama — have defended the legality and necessity of the programs, some US lawmakers are pushing back. In June, a bipartisan group of senators unveiled a bill that aims to rein in the problematic legal provisions that give US intelligence agencies nearly unfettered authority to conduct warrantless surveillance on domestic and foreign communications. Several other lawmakers have introduced their own measures, but legislative reform is still in early stages.

""An illegal and unconstitutional program of dragnet electronic surveillance.""

Meanwhile, a diverse coalition of interest groups and private organizations are directly challenging some of the NSA’s surveillance programs in court. On July 16th, a broad coalition of plaintiffs sued the US government for "an illegal and unconstitutional program of dragnet electronic surveillance," in which the NSA scoops up all telephone records handled by Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint in the US. Separate suits brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the American Civil Liberties Union are also in the works, but the government hasn’t responded to the allegations in court yet.

The companies at the heart of PRISM’s controversy are also acting out, but the specific details regarding their involvement in government surveillance on US citizens is still unclear. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and others have stepped up pressure on the government in the past month to declassify the process which compels them to hand over user data to the government. In an impassioned plea made by Microsoft on July 16th, the company’s general counsel Brad Smith said: "We believe the US constitution guarantees our freedom to share more information with the public, yet the government is stopping us."

Finally, there’s the group of people most affected by PRISM and its sibling programs: the American public. On July 4th, "Restore the Fourth" rallies in more than 100 US cities protested the government’s surveillance programs, focusing on electronic privacy. It’s not clear if public outrage will result in reform, but thanks to the dramatic actions of a young intelligence contractor, we now at least have the opportunity to discuss what the US government has been hiding from the public in the name of national security.

Link to article: https://www.theverge.com/2013/7/17/4517480/nsa-spying-prism-surveillance-cheat-sheet