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| Flickr CC by Ronan C. |
Even though former defense contractor and infamous leaker
Edward Snowden is very popular in the news, the stir around NSAdata collection known as the PRISM program was not enough to stop the
renewal of the practice by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court (FISA),
the secretive U.S. court created by congress to monitor intelligence
collection. Although many vocal people,
such as representatives from the ACLU, were outraged at the data collection,
the lack of mass media coverage of the renewal indicates that it was expected.
While the world is
still following the adventures of Edward Snowden, his efforts to leak top
secret documents from the National Security Agency may have been in vain. This week stories about the incident center
on whether Snowden will be granted asylum in Russia. Snowden has been unable to leave the airport
on Moscow since he arrived there almost a month ago after failing to receive
asylum in Hong Kong.
RobertLitt from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is on a
clean-up campaign, speaking in schools and to media defending the NSA program,
which stores information about cell phone calls without revealing the content
of the conversation or personal information about the phone’s owner. While Litt says the program is crucial to
national security, the number of warrants issued by the secret intelligence
court is on unnerving. FISA issued over
33,000 warrants last year, which is more than 2001 and 2002 combined.
Critics of the PRISM
program say that it is a violation of the fourth amendment, which protects
against search and seizure. Intelligence
officials insist that the data is only analyzed to target foreign terrorism
suspects.
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