It has recently come to light that the US Government has a programme called Prism. This programme is meant to protect US citizens by giving the US government the right to access everyone's internet use and emails without their permission. It is not clear the extent to which this is happening but most of the major US internet companies have signed up to the programme.
What this means is that the US government routinely collects data on our internet use on all of us - US citizens or not. No-one has consented to this but the US government says it is legal and a good thing.
What do you think?
www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/10/simple-guide-to-prism "What is Prism?
Prism is a US government surveillance programme for collecting internet data, operated by the National Security Agency (NSA). In operation since 2007, it gives US intelligence operatives access to a wide range of private online information -- photos, emails, files -- including data from companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Skype and Apple. In essence, everything that you do online can be accessed, tracked and recorded by the US government.
Is the Prism programme legal?
The US government claims that everything they have been doing has been with the knowledge of the US Congress, and with the approval of a top secret court called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.
However, while people are generally accepting of monitoring the communications of people suspected of serious crimes, it is claimed that Prism is being used indiscriminately, regardless of whether the targeted data belongs to a suspected terrorist, or to an innocent US citizen.
Of course, the Obama administration denies all of this. In a statement on 6 June, Obama called the reporting of the programme "hype" and added "you can't have a hundred percent security and also then have a hundred percent privacy and zero inconvenience."
The Director of National Intelligence James Clapper hammered home the denial, saying "it cannot be used to intentionally target any US citizen, any other US person, or anyone located within the United States"."
And it's not just government - all the internet companies are at it:
news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57601885-71/why-should-you-trust-google-facebook-more-than-the-nsa/