NSA Spying Faces Tech Giant Backlash

As if American technology companies haven't been screwed out of enough future business by Obama's rogue NSA Stasi thanks to compromised cloud computing which was to have been the next big thing but new revelations that government surveillance operatives have broken into the main hubs has tempers flaring. With the latest breaking news from that gift that keeps on giving over at Fort Meade it has been reported that the NSA and their Brit partners in crime at CGHQ have been tapping the central communication cables of Google and Yahoo allowing for the eavesdropping on all of the global communications of the two big tech badasses. The operation, according to a Washington Post story goes by the code name of "Muscular" and unlike PRISM which allows for surveillance operations that are known to courts this program is strictly a "back door" that further circumvents any sort of controls or official access provided by the corporations.

The piece in the WaPo, by veteran reporter Barton Gellman along with Ashkan Soltani states that:

According to a top-secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, the NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from internal Yahoo and Google networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records — including “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, as well as content such as text, audio and video.

The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters . From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information among the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.

The infiltration is especially striking because the NSA, under a separate program known as PRISM, has front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved process.

The MUSCULAR project appears to be an unusually aggressive use of NSA tradecraft against flagship American companies. The agency is built for high-tech spying, with a wide range of digital tools, but it has not been known to use them routinely against U.S. companies.

The use of back door access used by spooks and government abusers isn't a new thing, it has been around at least since the mysterious PROMIS software program back in the 1980's and has naturally evolved and morphed into any number of methods of surveillance, most of them unconstitutional and were it not for the rigged laws highly illegal. The story on this new program has Google and Yahoo pissed off, according to the Guardian piece - "Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, said the company was "outraged" by the latest revelations."  This is a good thing, it is no doubt that Google and other high tech and communications companies cut deals with the government to allow at least some of their illicit snooping but this appears to go above and beyond and the ongoing barrage of body blows to American big tech's reputations is eventually going to take a toll on the bottom line as customers will inevitably seek private and reputable firms outside of Der Homeland when conducting business.  While foreign firms have largely been at a disadvantage in the internet world Obama, Bush and Cheney's NSA has provided a great equalizer to enterprising global interests who now have one hell of a sales pitch to push once they develop the infrastructure and product.

Let's face it, there is nothing that can be done to force the rotten to the core U.S. government, especially the congress to do one damned thing about this fascist menace but aggrieved Silicon Valley corporations could pool their resources and sue the living shit out of the bastards. Given that Silicon Valley happens to be located in the very state that the porcine moral reprobate that is Senator Dianne Feinstein hails from a damned good start to the pushback could be a spending arms race with the defense and surveillance interests that that bloated sow and her husband represent and dislodge her fat ass from her throne on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Di Fi gave a lot of nice lip service to the U.S. Stasi spying on the European elite this past week but has predictably used her political influence to beat back any real reform and to implement a new law that will not only codify the skullduggery of the NSA but actually expand it. You can't make stuff like this up.

I know perfectly well the old saying that 'if my aunt had gonads that she'd be my uncle' but if I were sitting on the board at Google or Yahoo I would be at this time lining up the best lawyers and public relations firms that money can buy.