privacy and liberty of innocent Americans."

"This is not about giving the state access to the content of people's e-mails or telephone

conversations. That requires a warrant and all the proper processes have to be gone through."

"The public shouldn't be worried about this. This is about insuring that police and security

services can continue to protect the public, continue to catch criminals, and stop terrorists."

"We have to find a way to give the President the power he needs to protect us while making

sure that he doesn't abuse that power."

"An awful lot of misinformation, frankly, has been put about about what's being proposed."

So the America and British public have been repeatedly reassured they have nothing to

be concerned about over increased surveillance measures. But a recent top secret leak from

the NSA has proven that the agency has a massive surveillance program called Boundless Informant.

The program analyzes all of the data collected by their intelligence gathering systems and

the leak showed that in March 2013 three billion pieces of intelligence were collected from

US computer networks and worldwide 97 billion pieces of intelligence were gathered. It's

pretty embarrassing for the NSA because they've repeatedly tried to reassure the American

public that they had no such capability but let's take a step back for a second. Just

who are the NSA? It stands for National Security Agency and they're in charge of collecting

cryptologic intelligence on foreign targets i.e. not American people. The American public

are protected by the Fourth Amendment which means that no wiretapping can take place without

the approval of US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Attorney General of the United

States or the Director of the NSA and a whole bunch of other stipulations all there to protect

the public. But that didn't stop the Bush administration from expanding the NSA's powers

so they could monitor the web activity, including e-mails and telephone calls of US citizens

if one end of the communication was outside the US. That caused quite a bit of controversy

in the United States way back in 2007 and then in 2011 the controversy stepped up again

when James Bamford wrote an article for WIRED claiming that the NSA was involved in a massive

data mining operation in Utah. At that time, Chris Inglis the NSA's highest-ranking civilian

told reporters, "I can't tell you a lot about what they're going to be doing, because it's

highly classified." Congress couldn't ignore all of the noise and they started to ask questions

and the NSA kept batting those accusations out of the park.

"Does the NSA routinely intercept American citizens e-mails?"

"No."

"Does the NSA intercept Americans cellphone conversations?"

"No."

"Google searches?"

"No."

"Text messages?"

"No."

"Msn.com orders?"

"No."

"Bank records?"

"No."

But the latest leak shows just how far this NSA surveillance program has gone. We now

know that the NSA use BoundlessInformant to analyze all of their intelligence. A capability

they have repeatedly denied they actually have.

"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of

records?"

"No sir."

"It does not?"

"Not wittingly."

Boundelessinformant analyzes significant amounts of data and a heat map in the leak showed

that Iran and Pakistan were heavily monitored but the program didn't stop there. PRISM is

the code name for their program to access data held by tech giants like Facebook, Google,

Microsoft, and Skype. Although those companies deny knowing the program exists at all.

This slide shows that when each of those services were added to the PRISM program and this slide

shows the kinds of data the NSA has access to. Things like your e-mail, your chats, including

video and voice chat, your videos, photos, stored data, Skype calls, file transfers,

and even your log-ins. The scale of this data access means that almost anybody in any country

could have their information accessed. In an interview with the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald

and Laura Poitras, the man behind the leak Edward Snowden revealed just how powerful

this data is.

"I sat at my desk certainly had the authority to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant

to a federal judge to even the President if I had a personal e-mail."

And so then came the back pedaling from the politicians who reassured the public that

there was nothing to worry about. General James Clapper who denied the existence of

these programs in Congress called the leaks reprehensible. President Obama said congressional

oversight would stop the NSA becoming Big Brother but since he said that it's been revealed

that congressional leaders were briefed on it just 13 times in four years so Congress

was hardly doing its job of overseeing the agency. Al Gore tweeted that it was obscenely

outrageous to have people secretly surveilled and others have said it has broken the United

States constitution. Over here the government has refused to confirm or deny whether the

UK's GCHQ has had access to information gathered using the NSA's PRISM system and foreign secretary

William Hague said that law-abiding citizens have no reason to worry.

The argument goes that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear but is this

really how privacy works. When people close the curtains in their living rooms at night

they do not because they have something to hide but because they're entitled to some

privacy. Would you let people peer through your living room window without your knowledge

even if you didn't have anything to hide? And if that's the case shouldn't this be the

way that digital privacy works as well. Then there's another issue which is yet to be discussed

at great length. John Perkins the author of 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman' has highlighted

the potential for blackmail. If the NSA can dig up information on anyone it likes, it's

possible that dirt can be found on anyone, a presidential candidate, a supreme court

judge, academics. It's personal information on their sexuality or previous drug use that

they might want to keep private and that information can be used to blackmail people. With access

to this kind of data the NSA have the potential to hold a dagger over a huge number of people

so should any agency have access to this kind of information?

Daniel Elsberg who leaked the Pentagon papers 40 years ago has described Edward Snowden

as 'saving America'. He wrote that a digital police state infrastructure had been created

in the United States. Elsberg also says that this leak is the most important in the US's

history.

"The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is

that nothing will change."

It will be interesting to see what people in the United States say, it will be very

interesting to see how governments respond and as ever we're always interested to hear

what you guys think so let us know your thoughts about this story in a comment and if this

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