It comes as no surprise, I guess – just confirmation. More news about warrantless spying on us, as The Guardian now leaks what appears to be a training PowerPoint slideshow for an NSA program called “PRISM”. PRISM apparently gives the NSA direct access to the servers of Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, PalTalk (whatever the hell that is), YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple. And the program is ever expanding.

The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US.

It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.

So I guess if you’ve ever gotten some spam or phishing e-mail from Nigeria, you’ve communicated with people outside the US. My favorite “slide” is this one:

PRISM

Email, photos, video, chat – you name it, they have access to it. Not to mention the ominous, “special requests”.

Also not surprising, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that access to phone and Internet records by the NSA isn’t limited to Verizon.

…people familiar with the NSA’s operations said the initiative also encompasses phone-call data from AT&T Inc.and Sprint Nextel Corp., records from Internet-service providers and purchase information from credit-card providers.

Not worry, though, according to our intrepid freedom-loving Senators.

“Everyone should just calm down and understand this isn’t anything that is brand new,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid….

Senate Intelligence Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said the program is lawful and that it must be renewed by Congress every three months. She said the revelation about Verizon, reported by the London-based newspaper the Guardian, seemed to coincide with its latest renewal.

So, yeah, don’t worry, this has been going on for years, and it wasn’t some one-off thing related to any specific intelligence or perceived threat. Fuck the Constitution, this is just how we roll these days, so, as Lawton Smalls would say, “deal with it!”