PRISM

[tw]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

I thought we were still only talking about phone data. Content of emails and attachments is a whole different ballgame.

Phone calls are digital just like emails. The concept is metadata verses an actual (data) content.

For example, when you file taxes, metadata says you filed forms. Numbers in each row of each form (that is owned by a company that submits your data to the IRS) are actual data.

Protection means Verizon, Qwest, etc cannot submit that data to PRISM without a court order. Currently, long distance transmission lines can be tapped and recorded at any time by PRISM. In theory, they cannot listen or read it without a court order. But nobody (Verizon, Qwest, the court) knows whether that data is being reviewed.

"Trust us" was a concept advocated by Cheney, John Yoo, et al. And remains a defacto standard.

[Lamplighter]

This is the first time I've seen info about the FISA court in a public news source...

Washington Post
Peter Wallsten, Carol D. Leonnig and Alice Crites
6/23/13

For secretive surveillance court, rare scrutiny in wake of NSA leaks

Wedged into a secure, windowless basement room deep below the Capitol Visitors Center,
U.S. District Court Judge John Bates appeared before dozens of senators earlier this month
for a highly unusual, top-secret briefing.<snip>

The public is getting a peek into the little-known workings of
a powerful and mostly invisible government entity.
And it is seeing a court whose secret rulings have in effect created
a body of law separate from the one on the books
— one that gives U.S. spy agencies the authority to collect bulk information
about Americans’ medical care, firearms purchases, credit card usage and
other interactions with business and commerce, according to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).<snip>

Surveillance court judges are selected from the pool of sitting federal judges
by the chief justice of the United States, as is required by the law that established the panel.
There is no additional confirmation process.
Members serve staggered terms of up to seven years.