PRISM -- NSA Monitoring Web Services We All Use?

[LittleFuzzy]

All those tech companies have denied giving gov't agencies direct access to their servers. To a non-tech person (like me) it sounds like a semantics and legal terminology run-around.

It may sound that way to the ignorant but that would be just one of the many ways ignorance leads people to incorrect ideas and conclusions.

Also, these things are now considered a new variant of "finger printing" technology. Private corporations legally collect, cache, and track this data, for their "own" purposes, with "consent" from their users. Pretty much anyone with a computer or cell phone has "consented" to these Terms of Service, even when it wasn't fully transparent, or understood.

Anyone who's used Google, even once, has a web "finger print" that (theoretically) lives forever.

No they're not. Your web "fingerprint" is something else and while that data is theoretically available from this it's not what has been referred to so far. Your web "fingerprint" is also rather indefinite. It changes. So yes, a particular fingerprint can theoretically live forever but its association with you does not.

Would you like a Cliffnotes summary? Pretty sure the link is relevant to this thread, and the Guardian is better at writing than I am.

I stopped reading the article after it discussed precautions the guy was taking against physical observation and then explained that his paranoia was reasonable because the NSA, the "biggest and most secretive surveillance organization in the US" would be looking for him. The NSA almost certainly is the biggest surveillance organization in the US government, certainly by volume of surveillance data it generates but physical surveillance is not exactly its forte. It doesn't have operatives, it doesn't plant cameras or audio listening devices. If you want physical surveillance you go to the FBI, the CIA, hell the National Reconnaissance Office. The NSA deals signal communication. Any observation it's doing is an attempt to sniff out any data-streams Snowden is generating. It cares not a whit about the spoken word in his hotel, or trying to watch his fingers type in a password. Does the Guardian even HAVE editors anymore?