NSA data-mining 101: two 'top secret' programs and what they do

Phone-record data mining

On Thursday, the Guardian displayed on its website a top-secret court order authorizing the telephone data-collection program. The order, signed by a federal judge on the mysterious Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, requires a subsidiary of Verizon to send to the NSA “on an ongoing daily basis” through July its “telephony metadata,” or communications logs, “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.” 

Such metadata include the phone number calling and the number called, telephone calling card numbers, and time and duration of calls. What's not included is permission for the NSA to record or listen to a phone conversation. That would require a separate court order, federal officials said after the program's details were made public.

After the Guardian published the court's order, it became clear that the document merely renewed a data-collection that has been under way since 2007 – and one that does not target Americans, federal officials said.

“The judicial order that was disclosed in the press is used to support a sensitive intelligence collection operation, on which members of Congress have been fully and repeatedly briefed,” said James Clapper, director of national intelligence, in a statement about the phone surveillance program. “The classified program has been authorized by all three branches of the Government.”

That does not do much to assuage civil libertarians, who complain that the government can use the program to piece together moment-by-moment movements of individuals throughout their day and to identify to whom they speak most often.

Such intelligence operations are permitted by law under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the so-called “business records” provision. It compels businesses to provide information about their subscribers to the government.

Some companies responded to the new reports, but obliquely, given that by law they cannot comment on the surveillance programs or even confirm their existence.

Randy Milch, general counsel for Verizon, said in an e-mail to employees that he had no comment on the accuracy of the Guardian article, the Washington Post reported. The “alleged order,” he said, contains language that “compels Verizon to respond” to government requests and “forbids Verizon from revealing [the order's] existence.”

PRISM

The existence of PRISM, the Internet-based data-mining program, appeared to take many in Congress by surprise, except for lawmakers serving on intelligence committees, who have been briefed about it. PRISM involves the collection of digital photos, stored data, file transfers, e-mail, chat services, videos, and video conferencing from nine Internet companies, according to a “top secret” document posted on the Washington Post website on Thursday.

What PRISM reveals is NSA’s desire to hunt for terrorist threats where people communicate most these days – over the Internet, cyber experts say. Its existence, unveiled just hours after the initial news story about the wholesale collection of phone records, rattled privacy advocates.

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