Eric Dively 
Edward Snowden published information in June 2013 about the National Security Agency’s data gathering and electronic surveillance program. Public uproar ensued about this program, called PRISM, due to a lack of privacy.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, President George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act into effect with an executive order. It enhanced powers of U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on individuals and led to the creation of PRISM. This expanded authority was strengthened even more with legislation from President Obama.
PRISM works by collecting communications directly from the servers of U.S. service providers. It probes through search engines, AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Pal Talk, Skype, Yahoo and YouTube. Spokespersons from these companies have completely denied all allegations. They claim that they didn’t hand over personal information to the government without a court order.
Robert Delgadillo, a U.S. citizen, is very passionate about this issue. “That’s bulls**t!”, Delgadillo states after the PRISM program was brought up. He then added, “Now I hate my government even more.” and refused to say anymore, clearly aggravated.
DuckDuckGo is a search engine that may limit spying on citizens. The website address is https://duckduckgo.com. This business claims to have zero tracking. It does not use cookies or offer user logins. It doesn’t store any IP address data and defaults to an encrypted connection.
Those who use Facebook know that it targets people by looking at data such as posts, likes and dislikes, etc. Many companies use algorithms to make determinations about users. Many people feel it’s wrong for a business to do this and believe it to be unconstitutional for the U.S. government to spy on them.
PRISM and other government programs have gathered data from millions of Americans who live in the U.S. No credible sources have revealed how much though. This seems to be the nature of the new world since big brother is now watching.
