Internet companies such as Apple, Facebook and Google have vast amounts of data on you.
These
include the photos and video you share, the email you send and receive
and the musings you broadcast to friends on what you are thinking or
eating. Internet companies store all this information at data centers
they run around the world. When you're ready to read your email, the
message gets pulled from a computer at one of these centers. When you're
sharing a photo, the image gets transmitted to one of these computers
and stored there until someone else views it.
When
the government requests information on a customer, with the
presentation of a subpoena or court order, the internet service company
taps these same computers to access the data.
Now
comes a report on a clandestine program code-named "PRISM." As
described by The Washington Post, PRISM gives the US government access
to email, documents, audio, video, photographs and other data belonging
to foreigners on foreign soil who are under investigation. The newspaper
said participating companies and services include AOL, Apple, Facebook,
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Skype, YouTube and Paltalk. Companies that
responded to Associated Press inquiries say they only provide the
government with user data required under the law.
In
any case, like pieces of a puzzle, the bits and bytes left behind from
people's electronic interactions can be cobbled together to draw
conclusions about their habits, friendships and preferences using
data-mining formulas and increasingly powerful computers.
It's
all part of a phenomenon known as " Big Data," a catchphrase
increasingly used to describe the science of analyzing the vast amount
of information collected through mobile devices, web browsers and
check-out stands. Analysts use powerful computers to detect trends and
create digital dossiers about people.
It all
starts with the data you make available to store at these data centers.
Each center has clusters of computers and large internet pipelines to
connect the machines to the rest of the world. Each company typically
has several of these centres around the world, helping to meet growing
demand for its services and guard against service disruptions should one
site fail.
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