Everything you need to know about US security leaks and PRISM

US intelligence service the NSA has been spying on everything you do on Facebook, Google, Skype and more. How is this possible?

All you need to know about US leaks

INTERNET users have been shocked by claims that US law enforcement has been spying on their activity on sites such as Facebook, Google, Skype, YouTube and more.

Here's what you need to know: What is PRISM? On Thursday night The Washington Post and The Guardian revealed that US intelligence service the National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on emails, social network activity, listening in on Skype calls and more for the last six years. And they've been using tech giants Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, Skype and YouTube to do it. The program, codenamed "PRISM" and has been in operation since 2007. Its goal was to monitor foreign communications that take place on US servers. The Washington Post reported that it could listen in on Skype conversations as long as one person was using a conventional phone. The NSA is monitoring Google products such as Gmail, voice and video chat, file transfers, photos, and a live surveillance of your search terms. Users of social media (such as Facebook), and cloud services (such as iCloud, Google Drive and Dropbox) are also being monitored. About one in seven intelligence reports created by the NSA since 2007 contain data collected by PRISM, according to the leaked documents. The Guardian also claimed that UK intelligence agency GCHQ has had access to PRISM surveillance data since 2010. Who leaked the information? All of this information came to light thanks to a former CIA employee and IT contractor, Edward Snowden who leaked a 41 page Powerpoint slide show about the program to The Guardian and The Washington Post. Snowden fled the US to Hong Kong and was hiding in a hotel room until checking out yesterday . His current whereabouts is unknown. The contractor voluntarily revealed he was the source of the leaks and said that he knew he would be "made to suffer" for his actions but said he would be "satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant." "I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing," he wrote in a note accompanying the leaked documents. He does not fear the consequences of going public, he said, only that doing so will distract attention from the issues raised by his disclosures. "I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me." Snowden encouraged other whistleblowers to come forward and reveal just how much of our online lives are being spied on by intelligence services around the world. Is this legal? Perhaps the most shocking aspect to this story is that under US law, spying on online communications is completely legal. All the NSA and FBI had to do to was be 51 per cent sure the person in question was "foreign". In 2007 the Bush administration buckled to public pressure and appeared to abandon its warrantless phonetapping program. In reality the administration simply created a convenient workaround and gave it a different name. It passed the Protect America Act of 2007 which made it legal to electronically surveil internet users without a warrant if they were "reasonably believed" to be foreign. In 2008 Bush passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which made companies immune from legal prosecution for handing over information to the government. FISA gave PRISM full legitimacy. News.com.au has contacted a number of Australian agencies in relation to the NSA policy, but at the time of publication they have not provided a reaction. ASIO told news.com.au they have "no comment on the matter", and the Attorney General's department says it "does not comment on matters of national security". Denials US President Barack Obama said that PRISM did not apply to US citizens or to people living in the US. "There's a reason why these programs are classified," he said. "I think there's a suggestion that somehow, any classified program is a quote-unquote secret program which means that it's somehow suspicious. But the fact of the matter is, in our modern history, there's been a whole range of programs that have been classified." Director of US National Intelligence, James R. Clapper claimed the Guardian and Washington Post reports "contained numerous inaccuracies" and denied PRISM spied on US citizens. However he failed to explain how the stories were allegedly inaccurate. Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague said people who abide by the law "had nothing to fear" from the PRISM program. Google CEO Larry Page issued a denial on its blog titled "What the?" , claiming it had not given "the US government - or any other government - direct access to its servers". "Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a 'back door' to the information stored in our data centers," he wrote on Friday. "We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday." Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg claimed "Facebook is not and never has been part of any program to give the US or any government access to our servers". However, some tech experts have called the denials "doublespeak" that "obscures the scope of their involvement". Backlash Tech Crunch journalist Josh Constine wrote that "'direct access' didn't mean no access. Back door didn't mean no door." He said that tech giants used deliberately misleading language "that disguised what was going on". "Direct access means unrestricted access with no intermediary, but the government didn't need to be standing in the server rooms to get what it wanted," he wrote. "A back door means access to data without its host's knowledge or consent, but you were well aware of the NSA's snooping. The NSA's actions are likely protected by law, so saying you're only honouring prying that's legal didn't mean no prying." "The average citizen doesn't know the difference. They heard "we didn't help the NSA", and you did, so their trust in you has disintegrated." Gizmodo journalist Brian Barrett paraphrased Obama's comments on PRISM as meaning that "It's okay because we've known about it all along." On Twitter he wrote : "It's cool that I'm strangling you with my bare hands, I'm totally aware that I'm doing it and my mom said it was okay." The wider internet backlash has also been scathing. Less than 24 hours after the news broke, a Tumblr blog surfaced called "Obama is reading your emails" compiling funny photos of the US President sitting in front of various computers. Countless memes about the scandal have surfaced. ###