We take a break from our regularly scheduled nap to tell you that there is absolutely nothing to worry about with Edward Snowden’s newest revelation: that the NSA is tapping into Google and Yahoo data centers:
The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials.
By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.
According to a top-secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, the NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal 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 between 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.
Now never mind that when PRISM was revealed, the NSA defenders told us that this was nothing to worry about, that it “proved” that NSA wasn’t tapping directly into the data streams but using court-approved secure data rooms to snoop (as if that were any better). Never mind that Greenwald and Snowden have let the NSA defenders get hoist by their own petard again by letting them spin and spin and lie and lie only to revealed to completely full of crap. Never mind, as Allahpundit notes, that the court had previously rebuked the NSA for similar data-gathering methods. No, no, no, it’s all OK. I’m sure they’re not digging up information on us. I’m sure it’s stopped a terrorist attack at some point.
What? Quit giving me those looks. We can trust these people. Even when they’ve been revealed to be completely lying their asses off. Don’t you care about terrorism?