The National Security Agency is collecting file transfers, live chats and the contents of people’s e-mails. And the man who leaked information about the program has ties to Baltimore.
Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former NSA contractor who leaked the information about PRISM to the Guardian and Washington Post, grew up in North Carolina but moved to Ellicott City. He’s now in Hong Kong. His mother, Wendy, works at the federal court in Baltimore as the chief deputy clerk for administration and information technology.
Reports the Guardian: it obtained a PowerPoint presentation outlining the NSA’s top-secret PRISM program, through which the Maryland-based federal agency gains “direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other U.S. Internet giants” for the purpose of “extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information.”
Read this short Guardian article to see exactly how PRISM works.
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