The Daily Dot reports: According to Thomas Drake, a former National Security Agency senior executive who blew the whistle on the agency’s reckless spending and spying in 2006, a previously unknown NSA surveillance program known as FAIRVIEW aims to “own the Internet.”

Last month, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked a series of PowerPoint slides to the Washington Post and the Guardian revealing that the agency was engaged in a large-scale Internet surveillance program, dubbed PRISM, that collects Americans’ chats, emails, photos, and videos. One of the slides, only later released by the two papers, made reference to a group of additional “upstream” collection programs, including two named FAIRVIEW and BLARNEY, but gave no further details about their function.

Drake, who was prosecuted under the Espionage Act for his whistleblowing, explained the upstream programs to the Daily Dot.

“Upstream means you get inside the system before it’s in the Internet. In its pure form,” he said.

About the slide, Drake said, “you’ve got programs and umbrella programs.” FAIRVIEW is one such umbrella. Drake referred to it as a “highly classified program” for tapping into the world’s intercontinental fiber optic cables.

“It’s just a name,” Drake said, “that at the highest level means to own the Internet.” [Continue reading…]