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Googler, opinions are my own. I wasn't at Google when PRISM was discovered.

As far as I understand, your take on this is incorrect. At least for Google, people that worked there were pissed, some posting nasty posts about the NSA hacking their network. My understanding was, that the NSA tapped the lines between data centers.

The NSA was able to hack Google, because there inter datacenter communication was not encrypted, partially because it was on private fiber that they fully owned. After this project came to light, Google already had a project in the works to encrypt all traffic between data centers, which they enabled shortly after.



PRISM is the code for FAA702 collection, and has nothing to do with the Google/Yahoo WAN cable taps, which had the codename MUSCULAR.

PRISM continues to date. The USG can get any data they want out of Google without a warrant.




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