President Obama's Dragnet  —  Within hours of the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every …

NSA taps in to internet giants' systems to mine user data, secret files reveal  —  • Top secret PRISM program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Facebook and Apple  —  • Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007

Documents: U.S. mining data from 9 leading Internet firms; companies deny knowledge  —  “We have never heard of PRISM,” an Apple spokesman said.  “We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.”

U.S. Collects Vast Data Trove  —  NSA Monitoring Includes Three Major Phone Companies, as Well as Online Activity  —  WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency's monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches …

George W.  'Bush's 4th term'  —  The outrage over President Barack Obama's authorization of a nearly limitless federal dive into Americans' phone records obscures a hiding-in-plain-sight truth about the 44th president many of his supporters have overlooked for years:

DNI Statement on Recent Unauthorized Disclosures of Classified Information  —  The highest priority of the Intelligence Community is to work within the constraints of law to collect, analyze and understand information related to potential threats to our national security.

NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program  —  Through a top-secret program authorized by federal judges working under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S. intelligence community can gain access to the servers of nine Internet companies for a wide range of digital data.

DNI Statement on Activities Authorized Under Section 702 of FISA  —  The Guardian and The Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  They contain numerous inaccuracies.

Documents: U.S. mining data from 9 leading Internet firms; companies deny knowledge  —  The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents …

NSA secretly mining user data from U.S. Internet giants  —  PLAY CBS NEWS VIDEO  —  A top-secret arm of the controversial Stellar Wind program set up in the wake of 9/11 is allowing the National Security Agency and the FBI to tap directly into the central servers of nine major Internet companies …