Everything you need to know about PRISM

Since September 11th, 2001, the United States government has dramatically increased the ability of its intelligence agencies to collect and investigate information on both foreign subjects and US citizens. Some of these surveillance programs, including a secret program called PRISM, capture the private data of citizens who are not suspected of any connection to terrorism or any wrongdoing.In June, a private contractor working for Booz Allen Hamilton leaked classified presentation slides that detailed the existence and the operations of PRISM: a mechanism that allows the government to collect user data from companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, and others. While much of the program — and the rest of the NSA’s surveillance efforts — are still shrouded in secrecy, more details are coming to light as the public, as well as its advocates and representatives, pressure the government to come clean about domestic spying.

What the hell is PRISM? PRISM is a tool used by the US National Security Agency (NSA) to collect private electronic data belonging to users of major internet services like Gmail, Facebook, Outlook, and others. It’s the latest evolution of the US government’s post-9/11 electronic surveillance efforts, which began under President Bush with the Patriot Act, and expanded to include the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) enacted in 2006 and 2007.There’s a lot we still don’t know about how PRISM works, but the basic idea is that it allows the NSA to request data on specific people from major technology companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and others. The US government insists that it is only allowed to collect data when given permission by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Why is PRISM a big deal?Classified presentation slides detailing aspects of PRISM were leaked by a former NSA contractor. On June 6th, The Guardian and The Washington Post published reports based on the leaked slides, which state that the NSA has “direct access” to the servers of Google, Facebook, and others. In the days since the leak, the implicated companies have vehemently denied knowledge of and participation in PRISM, and have rejected allegations that the US government is able to directly tap into their users' data.Both the companies and the government insist that data is only collected with court approval and for specific targets. As The Washington Post reported, PRISM is said to merely be a streamlined system — varying between companies — that allows them to expedite court-approved data collection requests. Because there are few technical details about how PRISM operates, and because of the fact that the FISA court operates in secret, critics are concerned about the extent of the program and whether it violates the constitutional rights of US citizens.

CRITICS HAVE QUESTIONED THE CONSTITUTIONAL VALIDITY OF PRISM
How was PRISM created?As The Washington Post reported, The Protect America Act of 2007 led to the creation of a secret NSA program called US-984XN — also known as PRISM. The program is said to be a streamlined version of the same surveillance practices that the US was conducting in the years following 9/11, under President George W. Bush’s “Terrorist Surveillance Program.”The Protect America Act allows the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to explain in a classified document how the US will collect intelligence on foreigners overseas each year, but does not require specific targets or places to be named. As the Post reports, once the plan is approved by a federal judge in a secret order, the NSA can require companies like Google and Facebook to send data to the government, as long as the requests meet the classified plan's criteria.




Who is responsible for leaking PRISM?Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old intelligence contractor formerly employed by the NSA, CIA, and Booz Allen Hamilton, confessed responsibility for leaking the PRISM documents. He revealed himself on June 9th, three days after reports on PRISM were published; in an interview with The Guardian, Snowden said, “I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things,” and claimed he was motivated by civic duty to leak classified information.Snowden left the United States prior to leaking the documents in order to avoid capture, taking refuge in Hong Kong — where he stayed until June 23rd. With the assistance of WikiLeaks, Snowden fled Hong Kong for Moscow, and has requested asylum in Ecuador, Russia, and other countries. He is still residing in a Moscow airport, waiting to be granted asylum.

What does the NSA collect?While PRISM has been the most talked-about story to come out of Snowden’s leaks, the disclosures have shed light on a vast array of NSA surveillance programs. Broadly speaking, these can be split into two categories: “upstream” wiretaps, which pull data directly from undersea telecommunications cables, and efforts like PRISM, which acquire communications from US service providers. One of the slides in the leaked PRISM presentation instructs that analysts “should use both” of these sources.NSA programs collect two kinds of data: metadata and content. Metadata is the sensitive byproduct of communications, such as phone records that reveal the participants, times, and durations of calls; the communications collected by PRISM include the contents of emails, chats, VoIP calls, cloud-stored files, and more. US officials have tried to allay fears about the NSA’s indiscriminate metadata collection by pointing out that it doesn’t reveal the contents of conversations. But metadata can be just as revealing as content — internet metadata includes information such as email logs, geolocation data (IP addresses), and web search histories. Because of a decades-old law, metadata is also far less well-protected than content in the US.

NSA PROGRAMS COLLECT TWO KINDS OF DATA: METADATA AND CONTENT
A leaked court order provided by Snowden showed that Verizon is handing over the calling records and telephony metadata of all its customers to the NSA on an “ongoing, daily basis.” Mass collection of internet metadata began under a Bush-era program called "Stellarwind," which was first revealed by NSA whistleblower William Binney. The program was continued for two years under the Obama administration, but has since been discontinued and replaced with a host of similar programs with names like “EvilOlive” and “ShellTrumpet.”



How does the NSA collect data?Many crucial details on how and under what circumstances the NSA collects data are still missing. Legally speaking, surveillance programs rely on two key statutes, Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) and Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The former authorizes the collection of communications content under PRISM and other programs, while the latter authorizes the collection of metadata from phone companies such as Verizon and AT&T. However, multiple reports and leaked documents indicate the statutes have been interpreted in secret by the FISA intelligence courts to grant much broader authority than they were originally written to allow. They also indicate that the FISA courts only approve the NSA’s collection procedures, and individual warrants for specific targets are not required.

“INADVERTENTLY ACQUIRED” COMMUNICATIONS CAN STILL BE RETAINED AND ANALYZED FOR UP TO FIVE YEARS

An analyst starts by inputting “selectors” (search terms) into a system like PRISM, which then “tasks” information from other collection sites, known as SIGADs (Signals Intelligence Activity Designators). SIGADs have both classified and unclassified code names, and are tasked for different types of data — one called NUCLEON gathers the contents of phone conversations, while others like MARINA store internet metadata.

Leaked documents show that under the agency’s targeting and “minimization” rules, NSA analysts can not specifically target someone “reasonably believed” to be a US person communicating on US soil. According to The Washington Post, an analyst must have at least “51 percent” certainty their target is foreign. But even then, the NSA’s “contact chaining” practices — whereby an analyst collects records on a target’s contacts, and their contacts’ contacts — can easily cause innocent parties to be caught up in the process.The rules state the analyst must take steps to remove data that is determined to be from “US persons,” but even if they are not relevant to terrorism or national security, these “inadvertently acquired” communications can still be retained and analyzed for up to five years — and even given to the FBI or CIA — under a broad set of circumstances. Those include communications that are "reasonably believed to contain evidence of a crime that has been, is being, or is about to be committed," or that contain information relevant to arms proliferation or cybersecurity. If communications are encrypted, they can be kept indefinitely.


So, what now?In the weeks since the PRISM documents leaked, a widespread international public debate about the United States government’s surveillance and spying programs has engulfed the NSA, Congress, and the Obama administration in controversy. While outspoken supporters of NSA surveillance in Congress and the White House —including President Obama — have defended the legality and necessity of the programs, some US lawmakers are pushing back. In June, a bipartisan group of senators unveiled a bill that aims to rein in the problematic legal provisions that give US intelligence agencies nearly unfettered authority to conduct warrantless surveillance on domestic and foreign communications. Several other lawmakers have introduced their own measures, but legislative reform is still in early stages.

“AN ILLEGAL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL PROGRAM OF DRAGNET ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE.”

Meanwhile, a diverse coalition of interest groups and private organizations are directly challenging some of the NSA’s surveillance programs in court. On July 16th, a broad coalition of plaintiffs sued the US government for “an illegal and unconstitutional program of dragnet electronic surveillance,” in which the NSA scoops up all telephone records handled by Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint in the US. Separate suits brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the American Civil Liberties Union are also in the works, but the government hasn’t responded to the allegations in court yet.The companies at the heart of PRISM’s controversy are also acting out, but the specific details regarding their involvement in government surveillance on US citizens is still unclear. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and others have stepped up pressure on the government in the past month to declassify the process which compels them to hand over user data to the government. In an impassioned plea made by Microsoft on July 16th, the company’s general counsel Brad Smith said: “We believe the US constitution guarantees our freedom to share more information with the public, yet the government is stopping us.”Finally, there’s the group of people most affected by PRISM and its sibling programs: the American public. On July 4th, “Restore the Fourth” rallies in more than 100 US cities protested the government’s surveillance programs, focusing on electronic privacy. It’s not clear if public outrage will result in reform, but thanks to the dramatic actions of a young intelligence contractor, we now at least have the opportunity to discuss what the US government has been hiding from the public in the name of national security.