NSA spying scandal - the story so far. The real purpose is political blackmail NOT counter terror

[Life Long Dem]

19. Kurt Eichenwald says different about Prism

First, the much-ballyhooed PRISM program is not a program and not a secret, and anyone who says it is should not be trusted because they don’t know what they’re talking about. PRISM is the name for the government computer system that is used to handle the foreign-intelligence data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Some explanation up front: I spent seven years investigating the national-security systems and policies established in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks for my book 500 Days. I learned a fair amount about the data-mining programs of the N.S.A. and wrote about it.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/eichenwald/2013/06/prism-isnt-data-mining-NSA-scandal

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

Little that is new is revealed by Snowden in this and subsequent articles, except that the NSA's mass internet data collection program is called Prism.

So Snowden isn't even right about Prism when he calls it a program according to Kurt Eichenwald.