Guardian "walked back the 'direct access' claim made in Greenwald’s original article"

[muriel_volestrangler]

95. Yes, that's a significant part of the question - how much data was transferred

to where the NSA or other government agencies can copy it or examine it at their leisure? The WP wrote:

According to a more precise description contained in a classified NSA inspector general’s report, also obtained by The Post, PRISM allows “collection managers (to send) content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,” rather than directly to company servers. The companies cannot see the queries that are sent from the NSA to the systems installed on their premises, according to sources familiar with the PRISM process.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-company-officials-internet-surveillance-does-not-indiscriminately-mine-data/2013/06/08/5b3bb234-d07d-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story_1.html

if we assume that's the truth (and, remembering that James Clapper lied to Congress about this, any statement meant for public consumption by anyone should be held to be only possibly true), then that equipment, although at service provider locations, is controlled by the government. How much data is fed into it from the service providers, and what controls that - a FISA court ruling for each transfer of data, or a general 'approved process'? How big is that transfer of data - "everything that involves a user with a 51% or greater chance of being foreign", or just data that involves named userids on the service provider's system?