The US intelligence community’s broadest surveillance authorities are enshrined in Executive Order 12333, which primarily covers the interception of electronic communications overseas. The Order authorizes the collection, retention, and dissemination of “foreign intelligence” information, which includes information “relating to the capabilities, intentions or activities of foreign powers, organizations or persons.” In other words, so long as they are operating outside the US, intelligence agencies are authorized to collect information about any foreign person — and, of course, any Americans with whom they communicate. The NSA has conceded that EO 12333 is the basis of most of its surveillance. While public information about these programs is limited, a few highlights give a sense of the breadth of EO 12333 operations:
The NSA gathers information about every cell phone call made to, from, and within the Bahamas, Mexico, Kenya, the Philippines, and Afghanistan, and possibly other countries.
A joint US-UK program tapped into the cables connecting internal Yahoo and Google networks to gather e-mail address books and contact lists from their customers.
Another US-UK collaboration collected images from video chats among Yahoo users and possibly other webcam services.
The NSA collects both the content and metadata of hundreds of millions of text messages from around the world.
By tapping into the cables that connect global networks, the NSA has created a database of the location of hundreds of millions of mobile phones outside the US.
Gary Edwards on 14 Sep 11Is the Open Web Dead? In this very interesting interview with Wired's Chris Anderson, there is that possibility that Web Apps of the future will be like today's mobility apps; based on carefully controlled and closed platforms that use the Web's reach as transport. excerpt: I love the web, I hope the web isn't dead, but there is a demonstrable shift in user behavior towards mobile. And mobile brings with it two things: First of all there is a shift towards apps. Mobiles tend to be optimized for apps because of smaller screens ... The other aspect of the web, which was implicit in your question, is the notion of "openness" which is built into the web. And increasingly we see closed platforms that happen to use the web as their transport and display -- sites like Facebook -- which are not open. In the definition we chose, Facebook does not count as the "open web". Your iPad does not count as the "open web," Xbox Live does not count as the "open web". They use the internet as transport and sometimes they use HTML as the display technology and sometimes they render in a browser. By and large, they are not open ecosystems and therefore don't fall into Tim Berners-Lee's original definition of "the web". So I would say there is very much a shift away from the wide-open web to closed platforms. Some of those closed platforms are on mobile, some of them are closed platforms within browsers, but we're definitely seeing a shift -- and frankly it worries me as a consumer but it's a huge opportunity as a producer. So I am conflicted in that respect. I love closed platforms as a way to build a business, but as a consumer I prefer open platforms. That's not hypocrisy, it's wave particle duality if you will, but that's where we are.
