Reactions by non-governmental organisations Operational practices, laws, and other similar factors also matter. Yet technology, Arkko said, is not the only factor.

Engineers’ best answer to PRISM is to “enable end-to-end encryption to hide content and use Tor to hide who is talking”.

In general, members from the technical community are quick to recommend securing one’s communication as an avenue to take, if not already done so. A discussion is expected during the IETF meeting in Berlin in July 2013. More than once US agencies have brought security or interception issues to the IETF in the past.Īccording to Arkko, the entire internet community certainly did care “about how much we all can trust commonly used services”, but the IETF so far had not considered specifics of the PRISM revelations. The current Chair of the IETF, when answering questions on a reaction of the technical community explained, that participants in the core internet protocol standardisation body had “positions at all points of the privacy/surveillance continuum”. “The extent”, according to Bradner, “has been rumored, but a lot of people refused to accept that it was so large.“ Asked why no core infrastructure providers like network access, backbone or DNS providers were mentioned as PRISM partners (but only Google, Apple, Microsoft, Skype and other internet service providers), Bradner wrote it seemed only “logical that something is going on there considering what we already know“. Scott Bradner, one of the senior figures in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and Technology Security Expert at Harvard University, much like In't Veld pointed to Echelon when questioned about the US and other countries’ spy activities. Secure your communicationsįor the technical community, too, PRISM has not come as a surprise. Reding meanwhile has written to US Attorney General Eric Holder and has underlined she will seek clarification on the programme and possible violations of fundamental rights of EU citizens during a meeting in Dublin on June 14. The EU has not been able to establish its own surveillance programmes, Weber regretted. While political party groups nearly unanimously pushed to fix the EU Data Protection Regulation, Conservatives like Manfred Weber (EVP) clearly said, the EU has benefited from US anti-terror programmes like the controversial transfers of banking data (through the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program) or Passenger data. Moreover, EU member states including the United Kingdom or her own country (The Netherlands) “did the same thing” surveilling their own citizens. Since the spy programme E chelon was scrutinised by the European Parliament “we knew that the Americans were spying on us”, In’t Veld said. PRISM, which is only one of the programmes revealed by 29-year old former CIA and NSA analyst Edward Snowden (more are to come, promises The Guardian), could not have come as a surprise, Sophie In't Veld, liberal politician in the European Parliament scathingly criticised EU governments. But is this double speak? Mass surveillance by collection, long term retention and data mining is not at all new to those in power – technically or politically.

PRISM, a data mining programme by the National Security Agency and the CIA will be discussed alongside the upcoming G8 summit in Northern-Ireland (June 17-18 2013). After The Guardian and the Washington Post revealed details about mass surveillance of citizens inside and outside the United States, EU Vice President Viviane Reding and national governments have announced they would put some questions to US President Barack Obama.

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