NSA paid millions to cover Prism compliance costs for tech companies (legal, cost)

[J746NEW]

NSA paid millions to cover Prism compliance costs for tech companies | World news | theguardian.com

Big Government + Big Business - Public Accountability = Fascism

Guardian and Snowden

The National Security Agency paid millions of dollars to cover the costs of major internet companies involved in the Prism surveillance program after a court ruled that some of the agency's activities were unconstitutional, according to top-secret material passed to the Guardian.

The technology companies, which the NSA says includes Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook, incurred the costs to meet new certification demands in the wake of the ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court.

An NSA newsletter entry, marked top secret and dated December 2012, discloses the huge costs this entailed. "Last year's problems resulted in multiple extensions to the certifications' expiration dates which cost millions of dollars for Prism providers to implement each successive extension – costs covered by Special Source Operations," it says.

The disclosure that taxpayers' money was used to cover the companies' compliance costs raises new questions over the relationship between Silicon Valley and the NSA. Since the existence of the program was first revealed by the Guardian and the Washington Post on June 6, the companies have repeatedly denied all knowledge of it and insisted they only hand over user data in response to specific legal requests from the authorities.


An earlier newsletter, which is undated, states that the Prism providers were all given new certifications within days of the Fisa court ruling. "All Prism providers, except Yahoo and Google, were successfully transitioned to the new certifications. We expect Yahoo and Google to complete transitioning by Friday 6 October."

The Guardian invited the companies to respond to the new material and asked each one specific questions about the scale of the costs they incurred, the form of the reimbursement and whether they had received any other payments from the NSA in relation to the Prism program.

Only Yahoo answered :

A Yahoo spokesperson said: "Federal law requires the US government to reimburse providers for costs incurred to respond to compulsory legal process imposed by the government. We have requested reimbursement consistent with this law."

Google did not answer any of the specific questions put to it, and provided only a general statement denying it had joined Prism or any other surveillance program

Microsoft declined to give a response on the record.

The Guardian informed the White House, the NSA and the office of the director of national intelligence that it planned to publish the documents and asked whether the spy agency routinely covered all the costs of the Prism providers and what the annual cost was to the US. The NSA declined to comment beyond requesting the redaction of the name of an individual staffer in one of the documents.

So much for the idea these companies "Value the privacy of their users" they were hardly kicking and screaming to comply but willing ( eager even) to cooperate with the government.

I would say that the best reaction would be to stop doing business with these companies, but that would have no effect when they are in the back pocket of the fascist government.

[sirron]

Funny how the "Sequester" crisis didn't hit the NSA?


...yeah....