The White House really doesn’t want you to know what it knows about you. The risk, supposedly, is that disclosing how the nation’s intelligence apparatus works would give terrorists and criminals an advantage. But in the long run, the government’s penchant for secretiveness could actually undermine its ability to spy on terrorists.One of the reasons electronic surveillance tools such as PRISM work so well is because much of the world’s Internet traffic goes through U.S. servers. The American companies that own and operate that equipment can be subpoenaed and the data handed over to the government. Voila — intelligence secured!
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/20/prism-works-because-a-ton-of-data-moves-through-u-s-servers-thats-also-why-it-could-fail/