Deleted Article by The Guardian

This is from the Observer (Sunday Paper), not the Guardian as the headline states, though I think they published it on the Guardian website - the two papers have separate editorial teams though they share the same online space. You can see the printed edition of the Observer article reproduced here:

http://guardian.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

It'd be nice to see some verification of the claims, so I'd be interested to see the article if it is ever republished after checking (I think they took it down as the source - Madsen - is seen as particularly unreliable).

Can't see much value in posting this. If they deleted it it's probably factually incorrect or inaccurate and will probably return with corrections.

Yes, PRISM is probably an extension of the existing ECHELON program. It's weird that the correlation hasn't been made already. Fun fact, I remember Australia stepping out of ECHELON because they hadn't the capabilities to keep up with US surveillance meaning the spying was essentially one-sided [ref needed]. http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/ECHELON/echelo...

The deleted article is almost entirely sourced to Wayne Madsen, who has made disclosures and claims far more shocking than these in the OP:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Madsen

So are these disclosures new? Whether they're a scoop or not doesnt have much to do with their actual validity, but if he's made these claims well before Snowden, then it's likely they've been debated in the past, too.

Nicer-formatted version: http://meowc.at/message/204