“Nobody Is Listening To Your Telephone Calls” – Obama Says In Defence Of US Surveillance Programmes

President Barack Obama has defended US government programmes
conducting surveillance of Americans' phone and Internet activity,
insistingthat they were conducted with broad safeguards to protect
against abuse.
"Nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That's not what this
programme is about," Obama told reporters on a visit to California's
Silicon Valley on Friday.
He insisted that the surveillance programmesstruck the right balance
between keeping Americans safe from terrorist attack and protecting
their privacy.
On Saturday, the Guardian reported from a secret directive that Obama
has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to
draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyberattacks.
His comments follow news that the National Security Agency (NSA) and
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are tapping directly into
the central servers of nine leading US internet companies to spy on
foreigners.
According to the Washington Post newspaper, even though US citizens
were not the intended targets of surveillance, this has allowed
investigators to examine emails, photos and other documents of tens of
millions of Americans that can be used to track people and their
contacts over time.
In a statement on Thursday, James Clapper, director of national
intelligence, said the Postarticle contains "numerous inaccuracies".
Clapper said while the programme, code-namedPRISM, collects
information concerning "non-US" persons located outside the country,
it cannot be used for any citizens or anyone within the US.
The highly classified national security programme had not been
disclosed publicly before.
A US government source, who was not authorised to comment publicly on
the programme, confirmed its existence to the Reuters news agency late
on Thursday.
Clapper said PRISM, referred to as Section 702 of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, was recently reauthorised by
Congressafter "extensive hearingsand debate".
The programme's participants, the Post said, include Microsoft, Yahoo,
Google, Facebook,PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple.
In statements released late on Thursday, Google, Apple, Yahoo and
Facebook denied that thegovernment had "direct access" to their
central servers.
"Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We
disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we
review all such requests carefully.
"From time to time, people allege that we have created a government
'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a 'back door'
for the government to access private user data," the company said in a
statement.
In a statement, Facebook's Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan said:
"Protecting the privacy ofour users and their data is a top priority
for Facebook,"
"We do not provide any government organisationwith direct access to
Facebook servers,"
US Attorney General Eric Holder said on Thursday that members of
Congress were fully briefed on the intelligence-gathering programme
that includedthe daily collection of telephone records from Verizon
Communications.