New slides reveal more details about PRISM surveillence programme

The Internet is abuzz with news about the PRISM scandal for the past month. Now four new slides published by The Washington Post show in detail the level of surveillance that the National Security Agency and the FBI have been conducting via the controversial programme. The Post first released a slew of data slides related to the PRISM programme on June 6.

NSA contractor Edward Snowden first leaked classified documents to the press about the programme last month.  It now seems like at least two of the new slides validates his claims that US security agencies have the ability to conduct real-time surveillance of e-mail and stored content. It is still not confirmed as which specific Internet service providers allow such surveillance, though.

The new slides detail the kind of content that secuirty agencies can access from companies

For the last few weeks, companies like Google, among others, have been denying implications that they have directly participated in the programme. The new slides seem to point in the exact opposite direction. The data shows that the programme uses government equipment in tandem with private companies such as Microsoft or Yahoo to retrieve matching information and sends it without further review to the NSA, according to the Post report.

The new slides also detail the use of an FBI interception unit placed at the premises of the companies involved, which collects data and passes it on to the NSA, FBI or the CIA. The programme allows the NSA to receive live notifications when a target logs on or sends an e-mail and also monitors when a voice, text or voice chat happens.

The slides clearly mention an FBI interception unit that operates on the private company's premise

The new data talks about the companies involved and the time that they have joined the programme. Microsoft was the first company to join the fold in September 2007, which Yahoo followed about six months later. Google joined the programme in 2009, according to the slides, while Apple was the last to join the programme in October of last year.

Microsoft and Google were earlier seen petitioning a secretive US surveillance court to lift a gag order that prohibited the companies from giving out more information about government requests that they receive for customer data.

The slides detail the use of government equipment on private company property

So far, the companies can only release the total number of combined legal requests being made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act along with other requests to do with criminal investigations like fraud, kidnapping and homicide. Thus, it is impossible to really put a number on how many FISA only requests have actually been made.

There are still a lot of questions left unanswered. Chief among them is the allegation that the NSA may have direct access to servers of companies like Googe and Facebook. Another question that seems pertinent is the extra time that The Post took to publish these new slides. While The Washington Post and The Guardian may have more answers to this, Internet users may have to wait a while to get more answers to their questions.