Page 308 - Prism News Today

Hype as the president says? >> you have to desegregate which stories were talking about. there has been revelations about different top secret documents, one of which concerned the massive database of domestic calling logs, not the contents of the communications, every phone call an american makes thought just abroad but between two places in the united states apparently a record of that has been kept and continues to be stored in the federal government. thats story number one. >> so thats not h...

Revelations this week about secret spy tactics. a visually uncomfortable president obama was asked to change topics and explain what the nsa was doing with the something called -- something called the prism. what is prism? laurie seagal explains what we know. >> what we learned is there is a program and the program is basically designed to get information from silicon valley companies. >> reporter: major tech companies including google, facebook and microsoft deny knowledge of prism run by the n...

>> okay. so prism. laurie seagal is here with us now. the government just released a statement to clarify some of this. so what does the statement say? >> let me read it to you. this was released a couple of hours ago by james clapper. you saw him in the piece. under section 702 of fiza the u.s. government doesnt unilaterally obtain information from internet service providers. the information is obtained with court approval with the knowledge of the provider. don, what they are trying to make ap...

But there are alternatives. >> there are a bunch of tools people can use. there is one thats been developed with state department money for use in arab spring countries called a red phone. its supported by the state department and other ngos. >> reporter: as users try to understand how to protect themselves, silicon valley is under fire. >> these companies may be held accountable. i also think some subset of the population are going to think twice before they store certain private files with the...

Prism that does actually potentially get into content and all the while this is top secret. if this is a benign no big deal its been going on bush did it, if thats the case, why is it a secret? i do think we need to have a very public debate and understand more clearly and fully what the surveillance program is all about. it has huge implications. >> as the president said, you dont want to broadcast to the terrorists what the strategy is in the intelligence community. >> i mean, clearly -- >> he...

And they have developed extraordinarily sophisticated technologies and enormously expensive mechanisms in order to make that happen. >> lets try and clarify what their purpose was here. was their primary purpose to root out americans who may be up to no good or foreigners who are up to no good? >> well, under the surveillance law that passed in 2008, the bipartisan congress passed, they eliminated the warrant requirement for all conversations except ones that take place by and among americans ex...

Aired out on our public air waves, others are learning exactly how america defends itself. also for the first time, clapper named the internet monitoring program that the agency uses. its called prism. but until now the program had only been named in media reports. clapper also emphasized that the government is monitoring internet activity of foreign nationals only. its a practice, he says, thats been okd by congress. they only collect data from tech companies with a court order and knowledge of...

Dont know. we keep finding out more information about what we dont know. it comes down to your data, your privacy and what you are sharing on a regular basis. we broke it down for you. check it out. >> what we learned is that there is a program. the program is basically designed to get information from silicon valley companies. >> reporter: tech companies like google, microsoft and facebook deny knowledge of prism run by the national security agency. according to classified documents on oh taned...

E-mails and mining your phone calls. so im not sure thats exactly the right critique of these -- go ahead. >> if thats true and i agree, i was going to bring that up myself with congressman nadler having said this. but if thats true then this whole prism program is it not thwarting whats out there in the terrorist potential attacks? i mean, are we not getting appropriate information from prism? >> i guess the terrorists may be using e-mail while still knowing that their e-mail may be exposed. th...

How that is damaging at all. >> is it because were damaging the operation of prism or the image. do we know prism has thwarted some terrorist attacks. >> i dont know that. i dont know that. i cant answer that question. >> how frustrated are you by all of this? >> well -- >> as you said, you have been o potsing the patriot acts -- >> not the entire patriot acts. parts of it. certainly this part. because we anticipated that this could be the result. we were assured it wouldnt be but we anticipated...