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"Amid the furore over the PRISM data-leaking saga in the US, President Barack Obama has insisted that Americans aren't getting &amp;quot;the complete story&amp;quot; on the\u00A0program - which reportedly enables the US government to tap directly into the central servers of US-based Internet companies.\r\n\r\nObama told Charlie Rose in a PBS interview that\u00A0the debate has become cloudy, given that there are tradeoffs in any given program that the US takes on for security purposes.\r\n\r\n&amp;quot;To say there's a tradeoff doesn't mean somehow that we've abandoned freedom; I don't think anybody says we're no longer free because we have checkpoints at airports,&amp;quot; he said.\r\n\r\nThe gist of the interview has been covered\u00A0due to the release of\u00A0a partial transcript by Buzzfeed\u00A0several hours ago, but one thing notable in the aired interview is that Obama noted the US has to &amp;quot;make decisions about how much classified information and how much covert activity we are willing to tolerate as a society.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nObama said that because the NSA programs are classified - as they are set up to track down suspected terrorists by culling US phone records\u00A0and mining data from the servers of major Internet companies - &amp;quot;the public may not fully&amp;quot; understand how they work.\r\n\r\nThe president emphasized that they have put in place a whole system of checks and balances, and that NSA cannot listen to US citizens' phone calls and emails, by law and by rule, unless an agency such as the FBI goes to a court and obtains a warrant. There has been &amp;quot;no evidence&amp;quot; that the program has been abused so far, he added.\r\n\r\n&amp;quot;What I've asked the intelligence community to do is see how much of this we can declassify without further compromising the program,&amp;quot; the president said. &amp;quot;And they are in that process of doing so now so that everything that I'm describing to you today - people, the public, newspapers, etc., can look at. Because frankly, if people are making judgments just based on these slides that have been leaked, they're not getting the complete story.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nFollowing the news of PRISM, all of the major tech companies involved have denied involvement - and spoke up on the number of requests made by the US government for data.\r\n\r\nEarlier today, Yahoo disclosed that it\u00A0received\u00A0between 12,000 and 13,000 requests for user data from US law enforcement agencies between December 2012 and May 2013, while\u00A0Apple revealed yesterday\u00A0that the firm received 4,000-5,000 requests in the same period of time.\u00A0Microsoft revealed\u00A0Friday that it received\u00A06,000-7,000 requests implicating 31,000-32,000 accounts in the last six months, and hours earlier\u00A0Facebook revealed its FISA numbers, claiming that up to 19,000 user accounts were queried by the US government.\r\n\r\nIn the Charlie Rose interview, Obama also said the case of whistleblower Edward Snowden has been referred to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation, as well as possible extradition.\r\n\r\nYou can find our full PRISM coverage\u00A0here\r\n\r\nImage Credit: Paul Faith via WPA Pool/Getty Images"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/us/2013/06/18/president-obama-says-americans-arent-getting-the-complete-story-on-prism/>