Newly Released NSA Slides Explain the PRISM Data-Collection Program

[leveymg]

40. The metadata focus is the shiny object. The issues are email and profiling - the system profiles

all callers, and these panels do not indicate that there's any clear separation, or splitting off, of email content from metadata, as there seems to be for the path taken by phone communications from the database to the analyst.

The problem with profiling is this: even though the content of phone messages is supposed to be segregated within the databank, the system relies upon algorithms that are built upon all sources of information -- including other US and foreign intel agencies -- to identify possible terrorists. Those other databases (CIA, FBI, MI6, Saudi MID) don't reliably separate (or minimize) US person from foreign person information, so the profiling step has no 4th Amendment protections built into it at all.

In other words, when you place a call, you're being profiled with an NSA "database of databases" that makes no distinctions between US and foreign persons until at a later stage, the software or an analyst determines the caller isn't a likely terrorist or a foreign person.