Obama Administration Declassifies Details On “PRISM,” Blasts “Reckless” Media And Leakers.

[BlueCheese]

33. Some issues that need to be cleared up.

Clapper appears to be saying that PRISM is just an analytical tool that works on data collected under other means, i.e. FISA warrants or other things. This would be consistent with the companies' claims that they're not part of any data gathering operation, and respond only to lawful warrants. It would also be possible to construe the NSA slides' statement of direct collection from company servers as the companies pulling the data directly themselves.

That would be a great relief if this were all there is.

However, a couple of things don't quite fit into that.

First, in the NSA slides, there's a list of companies and the dates on which they started providing data. If all the government were doing was serving warrants, why would there need to be dates, or a list of companies? Can't they serve warrants on whomever they want whenever they want?

Second, if this is all there is, what is so reckless or dangerous about the leak? If all that was disclosed was some (somewhat mistaken) information about a frontend program, why such a big deal?