US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[Magda Hassan]

From The Intercept:

MAP OF THE STARS

THE NSA AND GCHQ CAMPAIGN AGAINST GERMAN SATELLITE COMPANIES

BY ANDY MÃœLLER-MAGUHN, LAURA POITRAS, MARCEL ROSENBACH, MICHAEL SONTHEIMER, AND CHRISTIAN GROTHOFF
09/14/2014 11:00 AM

"Fuck!" That is the word that comes to the mind of Christian Steffen, the CEO of German satellite communications company Stellar PCS. He is looking at classified documents laying out the scope of something called Treasure Map, a top secret NSA program. Steffen's firm provides internet access to remote portions of the globe via satellite, and what he is looking at tells him that the company, and some of its customers, have been penetrated by the U.S. National Security Agency and British spy agency GCHQ.
Stellar's visibly shaken chief engineer, reviewing the same documents, shares his boss' reaction. "The intelligence services could use this data to shut down the internet in entire African countries that are provided access via our satellite connections," he says.
Treasure Map is a vast NSA campaign to map the global internet. The program doesn't just seek to chart data flows in large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. Rather, it seeks to identify and locate every single device that is connected to the internet somewhere in the worldevery smartphone, tablet, and computer"anywhere, all the time," according to NSA documents. Its internal logo depicts a skull superimposed onto a compass, the eyeholes glowing demonic red.

Merkel and co really should reassess Germany's position on the Ukraine NATO thing. The USA is not Germany's friend. Never has never will be.