What was the Prism Program?
The Prism Program was a top-secret electronic surveillance program jointly implemented by the NSA and FBI beginning during Little Bush's administration in 2007. Its official designation was "US-984XN."
The Prism Program could conduct deep surveillance of instant communications and existing data. Its targets included customers within the United States and outside the United States who used participating companies' equipment and services. In other words, the United States could monitor the entire world.
The participating companies included nine international Internet giants, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and Apple.
Later, a guy named Edward Snowden ran off with two top-secret documents, and the whole world learned about America's program.
At the time, those two documents did not involve mobile phones. They mainly targeted Internet data. But this time, the "Hall Research Institute" revealed that Qualcomm was also part of the Prism Program, and that the United States' surveillance of the world was far more extensive than Snowden had exposed.
The moment this article came out, it drew intense attention from all sides because it directly targeted the US National Security Agency.
The previous Snowden incident had caused a huge uproar and become known to everyone. It had taken roughly a year to gradually die down. Now, the revelation that Qualcomm might have participated in the Prism Program had instantly touched the most sensitive nerves around the world.
Suspicion,
Panic,
These emotions arose naturally.
The most obvious reaction was reflected in the stock price. Qualcomm's stock began plunging wildly, triggering the circuit breaker three times before finally falling 20% and being halted for protection.
Qualcomm was truly panicking.
Chairman Tom Horton held another press conference to explain the incident.
"We can responsibly state that Qualcomm has not provided any backdoors to the US National Security Agency. Nor do