Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls, [... top-secret] documents [from the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division] show[s ...]. Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption:

Nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism [...]. The audio portions of these sessions have been processed correctly all along, but without the accompanying video. Now, analysts will have the complete 'picture'. [...] ACLU technology expert Chris Soghoian said the revelations would surprise many Skype users: In the past, Skype made affirmative promises to users about their inability to perform wiretaps.

Feedback indicated that a collected Skype call was very clear and the metadata looked complete, the document stated, praising the co-operation between NSA teams and the FBI. Collaborative teamwork was the key to the successful addition of another provider to the Prism system. [...] The NSA was able to start tasking Skype communications [on 5 February 2011], and collection began [the following day]..

☞ In a statement, Microsoft said: When we upgrade or update products we aren't absolved from the need to comply with existing or future lawful demands.

☞ These communications [can] be collected without an individual warrant if the NSA operative has a 51% belief that: 1) the target is not a US citizen and 2) [it] is not on US soil at the time.

(The NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division [is] described by Snowden as the "crown jewel" of the agency. It is responsible for all programs aimed at US communications systems through corporate partnerships such as Prism. [...] Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a "team sport".)

Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption. [... Top-secret] documents [from the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division] show that:

The company worked ["for many months"] with the FBI [...] – which acts as the liaison between the intelligence agencies and Silicon Valley on Prism – [...] to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive OneDrive (renamed). [...] "This success is the result of the FBI working for many months with Microsoft to get this tasking and collection solution established.";

☞ In a statement, Microsoft said: When we upgrade or update products we aren't absolved from the need to comply with existing or future lawful demands.

☞ These communications [can] be collected without an individual warrant if the NSA operative has a 51% belief that: 1) the target is not a US citizen and 2) [it] is not on US soil at the time.

(The NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division [is] described by Snowden as the "crown jewel" of the agency. It is responsible for all programs aimed at US communications systems through corporate partnerships such as Prism. [...] Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a "team sport".)

Outlook.com encryption [was] unlocked even before official launch, [... top-secret] documents [from the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division] show[s ...]. Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption:

• The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail: [...] For Prism collection against Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com emails will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption.;
• MS [Microsoft], working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability [...] to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the [NSA] would be unable to intercept web chats [...]. Two months later, [...] Microsoft officially launched the [new] portal.

☞ In a statement, Microsoft said: When we upgrade or update products we aren't absolved from the need to comply with existing or future lawful demands.

☞ These communications [can] be collected without an individual warrant if the NSA operative has a 51% belief that: 1) the target is not a US citizen and 2) [it] is not on US soil at the time.

(The NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division [is] described by Snowden as the "crown jewel" of the agency. It is responsible for all programs aimed at US communications systems through corporate partnerships such as Prism. [...] Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a "team sport".)

The NSA has, for years[, as part of the NSA's "FAIRVIEW" program]:

• systematically tapped into the Brazilian telecommunication network; and
• indiscriminately intercepted, collected and stored the email and telephone records of millions of Brazilians.

[...] People around the world [had] no idea that all of their telephonic and internet communications are being collected, stored and analyzed by a distant government.

How FAIRVIEW works?

1. NSA partners with a large US telecommunications company, the identity of which is currently unknown [as of 7 Jul 2013]; and
2. that US company then partners with telecoms in the foreign countries.

Those partnerships allow the US company access to those countries' telecommunications systems, and that access is then exploited to direct traffic to the NSA's repositories.

Implications

• It vests the US government with boundless power over those to whom it has no accountability;
• It permits allies of the US - including aggressively oppressive ones - to benefit from indiscriminate spying on their citizens' communications;
• It radically alters the balance of power between the US and ordinary citizens of the world;
• And it sends an unmistakable signal to the world that while the US very minimally values the privacy rights of Americans, it assigns zero value to the privacy of everyone else on the planet.

[Top-secret NSA's] documents [... make] clear that the agency collects and analyzes significant amounts of data from US communications systems in the course of monitoring foreign targets: [...] the NSA is able to direct [75%] of the internet traffic it intercepts from its collection points into its own repositories. [...] -- After the EvilOlive [program] deployment, traffic has literally doubled.

One end of the communications collected are inside the United States, [... but] a substantial portion of the internet metadata still collected and analyzed by the NSA comes from allied governments, including its British counterpart, GCHQ: An SSO entry dated September 21, 2012, announced that Transient Thurible, a new Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) managed XKeyScore (XKS) Deep Dive was declared operational. The entry states that GCHQ modified an existing program so the NSA could benefit from what GCHQ harvested: Transient Thurible metadata [has been] flowing into NSA repositories since 13 August 2012, the entry states.

In the mid-1970s, the US Senate formed the Select Intelligence Committee to investigate reports of the widespread domestic surveillance abuses that had emerged in the wake of the Nixon scandals. The Committee was chaired by 4-term Idaho Democratic Sen. Frank Church who was, among other things, a former military intelligence officer and one of the Senate's earliest opponents of the Vietnam War, as well as a former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Even among US Senators, virtually nothing was known at the time about the National Security Agency. The Beltway joke was that "NSA" stood for "no such agency". Upon completing his investigation, Church was so shocked to learn what he had discovered - the massive and awesome spying capabilities constructed by the US government with no transparency or accountability - that he issued the following warning, as reported by the New York Times, using language strikingly stark for such a mainstream US politician when speaking about his own government:

That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide.

He added that if a dictator ever took over, the NSA could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.