Fascinating. I'm amazed that people aren't pointing out the consequences to the USA of GCHQ had access to data covertly gathered from leading internet firms in the US.

Under US law, US investigators are not allowed to follow trails into this data that go to US citizens without a warrant. According to leaked training materials, they follow that rule. This is part of why they claim that this data collection is not an issue for Americans.

But if the data is shared with other intelligence services, who CAN legally follow those trails, then that's a pretty serious loophole. I'm reminded of the early Bush policy of turning over prisoners of interest to police in non-US jails where torture could be used and then the resulting intelligence reports shared back with the US.

Also the American investigators are told to report all times that they followed a trail to a US citizen. Were those trails shared as well? If so, then it gets worse still.

Given this is being driven by Keith Vaz a well known and documented politician of debatable integrity (corruption, bribes, lies etc) then I wonder why this is being driven.

This is after all knee-jerk news or FOTM too some. No new evidence has been presented, no insight and yet more Britons personal details are violated by the hollywood law changes that the goverment has instigated.

It is not new that the UK and USA are buddies, we share data, we don't like criminals and like to catch them, nothing changed there.

Heck given BBC has a department called BBC monitoring that is located in a secure building and who's job is to monitor all the news Worldwide and on the floor above is a office run by a USA agency, then if anything one could question anything the BBC says.

Like most, I'm more shocked at the rabble rabble, OMG I had no idea this was happening mentality of many than I am about this old cold-war legacy exchange of information comming to light, albiet no new evididence has actualy come to light and it is just Mr Vaz jumping on another bandwaggon for personal gains.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Vaz Would you trust him

What astonishes me about PRISM is the motive behind it. It appears the purpose of PRISM is to keep the government and it's politicians in operation only. It has nothing to do with protecting the citizens of the United States or otherwise.

For instance: if we presume PRISM is as omnipotent as described, and I do believe it is as sinister as it was chronicled. One has to ask this: if the "purpose" is to "protect" American/British citizens from harm then imagine how many child molesters, child pornographers, cartel bosses, under-ground arms dealers, etc. etc. are tacitly allowed to do business.

In other words their raison d'etre "to protect us" is bullshit for more people are harmed from all of the above or even in car accidents then from the sinister people they want to "protect us" from.

Perhaps they want to "protect themselves" from we the citizens?