The ABCs of the NSA

The ABCs of the NSA, written and illustrated by Bishop and Avalanche, is a simple guide to learning about the NSA and PRISM leak brought about by Edward Snowden. Children will learn about the scandal through our privacy alphabet, which includes  such terms as "online" and "keywords", and major players in the event such as Edward Snowden, James Clapper, and George W. Bush. It is recommended for children ages 5-9. Download the sample book here.

A is for Attack on September 11th: Following the 9/11 attack in 2001, much legislation was launched to protection against another attack including the Patriot ACT. This allows the government to search telephone, e-mail, and bills without a court order.

B is for Bush: George W. Bush was the 43rd president of the United States, who’s administration started PRISM.

C is for Congress: When this information was brought to the Congress they put it to a vote to disband it. It failed by 7 votes.

D is for Department of Defense:

E is for Espionage Act: Snowden has been charged with leaking information which violates the Espionage Act.

F is for FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation, who engages in data mining and surveillance through PRISM along with the NSA.

G is for the Guardian: The Newspaper that helped Snowden release documents about government surveillance through columnist Glenn Greenwald.

H is for Homeland Security Act: One of the Laws that was passed that gave government the right to spy on us for our protection. Too late we found out that they abused this power.

I is for Information Privacy: The government believes that can be easily thrown away for the illusion of safety.

J is for James Clapper: Lied about collecting data on phone calls to Congress.

K is for Keywords: The NSA could monitor you even with a simple statement they may contain a keyword that they see as a potential “threat”

L is for Laura Poitras: A documentary filmmaker who partnered with Glenn Greenwald to help Snowden release his statement.

M is for Metadata: The type of data that is supposedly collected by the NSA. Metadata is informational data about the communication but not the actual conversation.

N is for NSA: National Security Agency the main user of the data collection tools.

O is for Online: Big Brother is watching you, so you need to be careful where you go and what you do online.

P is for Prism: Mass data collection from various companies and sites that include Google, Apple, Microsoft, and more.

Q is for Questions: You may have questions but so do a lot of us and some that we may never know.

R is for Russia: Where Snowden was granted temporary Political Asylum.

S is for Snowden: Edward Snowden is the leaker of data concerning the NSA’s Projects.

T is for Tempora: The US is not the only one who is spying. The UK has a program similar to PRISM called Tempora.

T is for Tor Project: A network that conceals the origin and destination of internet traffic.

U is for US Bill of Rights: NSA violates the 4th amendment which protects us from the government getting our information.

V is for Verax: The username that Edward Snowden used to converse with members of the Press.

W is for Whistleblower: A person who exposes information to the public.

X is for XKeyscore: A search database of emails, computers, VPNs and other information that is searchable.

Y is for YOU: You might be thinking well what can I do about it. The first thing is knowing and spreading the information.

Z is for Zetabytes: Zetabyte is a very large amount of digital data. Through the Prism project there were probably many Zetabytes of information that was captured by the NSA.