14 DAY TRIAL // The United States president Barack Obama has said that NSA’s PRISM project does not apply to U.S. citizen or those that are currently living in the United States.
Soon after reports of PRISM reached the media, a program that enables the U.S. government to tap into the central servers of U.S.-based Internet companies, like Google, Facebook and Microsoft, government officials stepped up and made various statements.
However, the President’s response reaffirms some reports that PRISM is not targeted towards U.S. citizens. However, it does not deny claims that data is being collected anyway, The Next Web reports.
Furthermore, it does nothing to ease the minds of those outside of U.S. soil.
“In the abstract, you can complain about ‘big brother’ and how this is a potential program wrong amok. But when you actually look at the details, I think we’ve struck the right balance,” Obama said.
If we were wondering whether the program would be stopped now that it has come to light, I guess we have our answer, since it’s unlikely that the government agency would quit on a program that is well balanced.
Obama then went to reiterate something the NSA director said yesterday, namely that there’s a reason these programs are classified and that the leak was not a welcomed one.
As some of the people’s main concerns once the information about PRISM came out were that their phone calls were being listened on.
However, president Obama went on and denied such allegations, claiming that this is not what the program is about.
“As was indicated, what the intelligence community is doing is, looking at those numbers, and durations of calls. They are not looking at people’s names and they’re not looking at content. But, by sifting through this so-called metadata they may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism,” he said.