The NSA and surveillance ... made simple - animation

The NSA and surveillance ... made simple - animation
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Confused about the NSA revelations? Do you wonder how the activities of GCHQ and the NSA affect you? Why spies have been monitoring Facebook, Gmail and Skype? And even if are being watched online, how does that affect what we do online? This animation, narrated by Jemima Kiss, explains what the disclosures mean for all of USA

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Now that nearly all of us are online, connected or digital in some way,

spies are no longer watching just one or two bad guys.

Instead, the UK and US governments are both collecting massive amounts of information

from the things we do on our phones and over the Internet.

There are two main ways in which they get hold of this information

One way is working with the companies that run these systems,

and tap the cables that are vital for moving all this information around.

They can then sift through the huge amount of data they gather and all the messages that are there,

and store them in massive computer databases.

There are other techniques, involving user their relationship with technology companies,

to get hold of things like e-mails, messages, or other information straight from their US servers.

The spy agencies do throw away most of the content they collect.

They keep that on their systems for about 3 days, then discard everything that is not from one of their targets.

Metadata, though: who sent a message, who was it too, when it was sent, and more, is a different matter.

The agencies keep almost all the metadata they see for around a month in the UK, and up to a year in the US.

That lets them build up profiles of millions of people:

who talks to whom, who knows who, and where people are, if need be.

These revelations pose many questions:

what is the balance between our right to privacy, and the authorities' duty to protect us.

Governments in America and the UK argue that these surveillance programs keep people safe from terrorism.

But what happens if you are wrongly accused?

And should we just accept that the Internet is now a different place,

ran by business and governments that who can monitor us how they like?

Now that you know you are being watched, how does that change your behavior,

how you talk to your friends, and how much you trust the world around you.

These revelations have change the Internet for us forever.

Does privacy has a future online at all?