Tech company “transparency reports” reveal massive NSA spying

The token reforms proposed in the report would not substantially disrupt the mass spying operations.
Major US telecommunications companies released figures this week showing that the National Security Agency has requested data relating to tens of thousands of customer accounts in just the first half of last year. The release of the “transparency reports” was part of an agreement reached with the Obama administration allowing limited disclosures of information about the massive police-state spying apparatus.
The accounts spied on were targeted as part of the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program, which has been in operation since 2007. Using PRISM, the spy agency obtains orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to require telecommunications companies to turn over information. PRISM came to the attention of the public as a result of documents provided by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden.
Slides released by Snowden show that PRISM collects email, chat (voice and video), video, photos, stored data, file transfers, video conference data, notifications of target activity and online social networking details from a range of providers including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple.