An intelligence leak has revealed PRISM, a massive US NSA data mining operation spying on people’s data shared through Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo, AOL, and others. Outrageous, but ultimately not surprising, given that President Obama has, disappointingly, shown himself all too willing to continue his predecessor’s expansion of powers to invade privacy in the name of national security.

Additional reading:

• The Brief
• Washington Post breaking story
• Emily Bazelon for Slate on why we should worry.
• FP Magazine on the spin war.
• Buzzfeed on tech companies’ mealy mouthed denials of “direct access” to user data.
• The Atlantic on PRISM’s legal basis and how to take it back.
• Slacktivist asks, is NSA is biting off more data than they can chew?
• Visual design expert Professor Edward Tufte has some choice words about the PRISM Powerpoint slide “design.”
• Also follow NSA Careers on Twitter!

Update: More from Guardian on the whistleblower: Edward Snowden.

Counterpoint from Kurt Eichenwald and David Simon (most famous for The Wire).