Um.. I nodded with your first response ( zero days ) as it was accurate, but this may be taking it a little too far. If PRISM has nothing to do with mass surveillance, how would you define it?
A data ingestion system for targeted (not mass) surveillance of particular Internet communication accounts (on US service providers) belonging to non-Americans living outside the US believed to have foreign intelligence value: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34510696
I am hesitating to make a guess, but given various existing public lists of 'bad guys', it would be silly of me to assume that the targeted population has a smaller head count than those lists combined ( if not drastically extended ). If that is the case, the sheer number of those likely caught in that particular surveillance would likely be categorized as mass surveillance as opposed to targeted. I get that each industry likes to play with definitions, but you don't get to throw a grenade into lake and call it traditional fishing as it was always intended.
Or are they are considered targeted, because they are on the list and the list just keeps growing?
The whole conversation is silly. If you even buy this particular story ( we only look at accounts of non-Americans ), it gets dismantled rather quickly the moment you try to go through a basic thought exercise of how you would sift that data and ensure no 'foreign intelligence of value' was lost. The how is simple. We take everything in. That is the definition of mass surveillance.
And before we get into 'well, none of that was ever disclosed', I would like to turn your attention to the one of those few times, when IC had a chance to come clean and chose not to[1] and lie in front of congress. Good times. In other words, I can't really take their words at face value.
All this is before we get to Snowden and his revelations.
> If that is the case, the sheer number of those likely caught in that particular surveillance would likely be categorized as mass surveillance
No need to speculate. The internet companies that provide this data publish transparency reports showing ranges for how many accounts are affected. It's a small fraction of a percent.
> The how is simple. We take everything in.
That is illegal, and there is no evidence of that happening. PRISM, the program that we're talking about in particular, explicitly isn't that according to Snowden's documents and the declassified documents.
> when IC had a chance to come clean and chose not to
He came clean right after and declassified a bunch of documents on that phone metadata program (https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-...). Remember, the line of questioning was about if the NSA builds dossiers on Americans, which it doesn't do. The questions then pivoted to whether it collects any information at all about Americans, which would include the phone metadata collection
> I can't really take their words at face value
You don't have to. There have been several leaks, including Snowden's massive leak, showing that the NSA doesn't do this. There is also the law, which says the NSA can't do this, and there is congressional oversight from the Senate Intelligence Committee, which ensures that the NSA doesn't do this. If what you claim was happening, leakers would be sure to leak that first over anything else because it is unquestionably illegal.
