Four Corners: Oct 6

Tonight Four Corners screen a PBS Frontline report ‘Privacy Lost.’

Martin Smith reports on how governments use internet providers to spy on you.

When a contractor from America’s National Security Agency (NSA) downloaded tens of thousands of top-secret documents from a highly secure Government network, it led to the largest leak of classified information in history—and sparked a fierce debate over privacy, technology and democracy in the post-9/11 world.

In leaking the files, Edward Snowden had not only exposed classified information, he also exposed how the US Government had co-opted major tech companies to help it spy on millions of people in the United States and around the world—including Australians.

That surveillance did not simply mean detailing the source and destination of communication, but the communications themselves.

This week on Four Corners, Frontline producer Martin Smith explores the secret relationship between Silicon Valley and the National Security Agency, investigating how the Government and tech companies worked together to gather and warehouse data. That data includes the communication of Americans and anyone else who communicates via US data systems.

The program has special significance in the wake of new government legislation in the process of being passed in Australia. Those laws will demand that web and mobile data be kept for two years so it can, if needed, be seized by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The changes to law also mean that journalists can be jailed for publishing stories detailing what are called ‘special intelligence operations’.

With extraordinary access to key participants, producer Martin Smith talks to the people who published the leaked files delivered by Edward Snowden. He also talks with people inside the NSA and the politicians with oversee the NSA’s work.

Through in-depth interviews with whistleblowers, elected officials, journalists, intelligence insiders and cabinet officials, the program has woven together the secret narrative that reveals the scale and scope of the Government’s spying program.

It focuses on the ways Silicon Valley has played a role in the NSA’s dragnet, and blurred the boundaries of privacy for us all.

As big technology companies encouraged users to share more and more information about their lives, they created a trove of data that could be useful not simply to advertisers—but also to the Government. Privacy advocates have been worried about this since the early days of the internet, and the Snowden revelations about the scope of Government spying brought their fears into high relief.

How did big tech companies react when the Government asked them to turn over data on millions of ordinary American citizens? And what do companies like Google, Facebook and Yahoo! really know about you?

Part political thriller and part spy novel, Privacy Lost exposes domestic surveillance in a post-9/11 world.

Monday 6th October at 8.30pm on ABC.