ESSENTIAL LIBRARY OF THE INFORMATION AGE BIG DATA AND PRIVACY RIGHTS by M M Eboch CONTENT CONSULTANT Dr Scott J Shackelford Assistant Professor of Business Law and Ethics Kelley School of Business Indiana University
CHAPTER 1 SPIES ON THE INTERNET any Americans make phone calls send texts and e mails and search the Internet on a daily basis People tend to assume these activities are only of interest to the individuals directly involved Or at least people thought this before June 2013 That's when the news broke that the US National Security Agency NSA was spying on US citizens The news was first reported in a British daily newspaper the Guardian and soon after in the Washington Post The story describes extensive eavesdropping on communications A secret court order had required the telecommunications company Verizon to give all of its telephone data to the NSA The records were made available every day on an ongoing basis Newspapers also reported the NSA had direct access to the servers at nine Internet firms A secret program called PRISM allowed the agency to collect information from companies such as Google Microsoft Apple Yahoo and Facebook NSA officials could look at a user's search history and access the contents of e mails live chats photos videos and file transfers A protester in Germany participates in a demonstration against NSA survellance
