Last night, Stephen Colbert covered the latest in the NSA spying program.
They're still sifting through the blockbuster revelations about the NSA cyber-surveillance program PRISM. Millions of Americans whose Internet privacy has been violated are shocked to learn that anything on the Internet was ever private. And now, the man at the center of the storm, leaker Edward Snowden, has gotten some bad news.
FOX NEWS (6/11/2013): Booz Allen Hamilton, the national security contractor where Snowden worked for three months at its Hawaii office, this morning confirming that he's been fired.
Ooh, fired. That can't be easy in this job market. Plus, he doesn't have any references; he only has all of yours.
Now, among Snowden's leaks was a paper that says "the NSA collected 97 billion pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide in March 2013 alone".
But 97 billion? There's no building big enough to hold all that data... at least until they finish this one.
THOMAS ROBERTS (6/7/2013): These pictures are amazing. The compound is five times larger than the U.S. Capitol, all to store big data.
FOX NEWS GUEST (6/9/2013): There will be yottabytes of data. People are familiar with gigabytes. Well, a yottabyte is a billion gigabytes, and then a million of those. A million billion gigabytes.
Now to put that in perspective, just one yottabyte is equivalent to 200 trillion DVDs. Which is approximately how many DVDs I'm behind on Game of Thrones, so no one tell me about the Red Wedding.
Now, I have to admit, at first I found this program to be a shocking breach of the public trust. The intimate details I share from my Gmail account are no business of big government. They are for one purpose only, so I can get targeted ads for boner pills.
But then, I learned that PRISM targets only foreigners. Yeah. Evidently, that torch of freedom is only for Americans. For the rest of the world, she's holding a boom mic.
Now, to ensure that they were limiting their searches to non-Americans, PRISM's data analysts would key in search terms "that are designed to produce at least 51% confidence in a target's 'foreignness'".
It was simple. They just used search terms Americans weren't familiar with, such as "Portion Control", "Paid Maternity Leave", and "Gooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllllllllllllll!"
(audience applause)
Folks, this idea of foreign surveillance really strikes a chord with me, particularly 'cause I've got a guest tonight who strikes chords professionally, and I am 51% sure he is foreign. For one thing, an American would never say "All You Need Is Love". What about nacho cheese? That's why tonight, to keep an eye on this guy, I've got cameras and microphones all over this studio. Don't tell him. We'll be right back with Sir Paul McCartney.
Video below the fold.
He also looked at the opposition to the
NYC bike sharing program.
Meanwhile, John talked about the
State Department scandal, noting that it's the second
whistleblower this week, and talked with Sam Bee about the difference between whistleblowers and
snitches.
Lewis Black then looked at some
future technology.
Stephen
had on Sir
Paul McCartney, who performed
"I've Just Seen a Face",
"Hi, Hi, Hi" and "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite",
"Listen to What the Man Said",
"Lady Madonna", and
"Birthday". John had on Mavis Staples, who performed "
Can You Get to That" and "
I Like the Things About Me".