General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Are The American People Being Spied On Or Not? [View all]reusrename
(1,716 posts)There are two data collection methods. They get metadata from various company servers, but they also tap into the optical fiber backbone of the internet itself, which I believe is what the prism program is about.
Prism stores everything. All electronic contents. Phone calls that have been digitized, emails... everything.
here's a recent discussion on reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ftwhd/from_2007_the_nsa_had_installed_glass_prisms_on/
this is why we have storage facilities in Utah that store yottabytes of data:
http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/01/nsa-to-store-yottabytes-of-surveillance-data-in-utah-megarepository/
they don't have a warrant for this, AFAICT
the warrant that you keep referring to is for metadata that they are getting directly from those companies, not from downloading the entire internets