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So you may have seen this guy's photo floating around the web and media. His name is Edward
Snowdon and, apart from having a name like a protagonist from a crime novel, is the leak
that has shown us that various governments and tech companies have been gathering more
data on us than we may have previously thought.
Snowdon worked as a consultant for the National Security Agency of the USA which has been
running a scheme called prism with big US tech companies like Yahoo, Google, Apple and
Facebook to track the data that we put online.
It looks like prism allowed the NSA to look at information as detailed as our instant
messaging, search history, voice traffic and social network data.
Obama has defended the programme -- saying that, although classified, the actions of
the NSA and Prism have been supported by elected officials and data on specific individuals
is protected by the courts and warrants.
However, if you are not a citizen of the USA their government is able to access this data
without any need for legal backing because the data stored by these companies is kept
on United States soil.
There have been suggestions that the UK's government surveillance headquarters, GCHQ,
has also had access to the data collected by Prism with the Guardian Newspaper suggesting
that the agency was bypassing British law to carry out surveillance.
So governments carry out surveillance, I think we all know this, but what makes this leaked
information unnerving is the involvement of private internet companies the international
scope of the scandal that could warrant our domestic privacy laws irrelevant and the intimacy
of the information available.
Now, I have nothing to hide. If I'm being watched now the most embarrassing thing that
the government would find is the number of Korean pop music videos I watch and sheer
volume of times I type "Duncan James topless" into Google. Oh, he so dreamy. Is this really
going to affect every day citizens?
This echoes something that the British foreign secretary, William Hague said, that law abiding
citizens had nothing to fear and that they would never be aware of all the things agencies
are doing to stop your identity being stolen or stop a terrorist attack.
These videos are a chance to talk about these issues in the comments below, so tell me what
you think of these revelations. Is this a gross infringement of our privacy or just
our intelligence agencies doing their job?
Has this changed the way you look at our leaders like Cameron and Obama -- and what about the
private companies that provide the services that we use every day giving up our information?
Head downstairs and engage with someone in the comments or leave a video response.
I'll be floating around in the comments don't forget to like this video and subscribe if
you want to take part in a brain-cell tickling debate every week. I've been rhymingwithoranges.
Goodbye!