A chart prepared by the NSA, contained within the top-secret document obtained by the Guardian, underscores the breadth of the data it is able to obtain: email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP (Skype, for example) chats, file transfers, social networking details, and more.

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The presentation claims PRISM was introduced to overcome what the NSA regarded as shortcomings of Fisa warrants in tracking suspected foreign terrorists. It noted that the US has a "home-field advantage" due to housing much of the internet's architecture. But the presentation claimed "Fisa constraints restricted our home-field advantage" because Fisa required individual warrants and confirmations that both the sender and receiver of a communication were outside the US.

"Fisa was broken because it provided privacy protections to people who were not entitled to them," the presentation claimed. "It took a Fisa court order to collect on foreigners overseas who were communicating with other foreigners overseas simply because the government was collecting off a wire in the United States. There were too many email accounts to be practical to seek Fisas for all."

The new measures introduced in the FAA redefines "electronic surveillance" to exclude anyone "reasonably believed" to be outside the USA - a technical change which reduces the bar to initiating surveillance.

The act also gives the director of national intelligence and the attorney general power to permit obtaining intelligence information, and indemnifies internet companies against any actions arising as a result of co-operating with authorities' requests.

In short, where previously the NSA needed individual authorisations, and confirmation that all parties were outside the USA, they now need only reasonable suspicion that one of the parties was outside the country at the time of the records were collected by the NSA.

The document also shows the FBI acts as an intermediary between other agencies and the tech companies, and stresses its reliance on the participation of US internet firms, claiming "access is 100% dependent on ISP provisioning".

The post is too long to quote here - but well worth reading.  If anyone asks why your hair is standing on end, or seems to be on fire, just give them the link.

I'm sure the talking point will be that this program is only targeting foreign communications, but the standard of "reasonably believed" is about as broad as it could be.  Further, the assurance of FISA court "strict review and oversight" is no assurance at all, given the rubber-stamp nature of its approvals.

Spying isn't the right term to use when folks freely and openly Tweet every thought that they have, post embarrassing selfies on tumblr and facebook, and search Amazon for copies of the Anarchist Cookbook. That the gov't wants to perform a Google search on the data that we share with the world of our own volition doesn't surprise me one bit. We put the information out there for the sole purpose of being shared.

I think I'm going to write an app where people can actually see the giant billboard they've erected on the internet; the digital equivalent of Marley's chains.

I wear the chain I forged in life! I made it link by link and yard by yard! I gartered it on of my own free will and by my own free will, I wore it!

So many interactions with the internet and tech generally these days bring with them the assumption of giving up privacy.  We know for the most part that everything we google and gmail and facebook and twitter can be accessed by someone without our permission for marketing purposes and otherwise.  The idea that the government, on top of the dozens of people data mining to sell us stuff, is looking at it as well just doesn't bother you if you understand how often you are giving up privacy just by using a site and not reading the click/agreement at the start.  

In short, if you are using the internet the way most people use the internet, your privacy was lost with what you are posting to google and facebook already.

Secondly, there is a sense that I think most of us have in the numbers.  In fact the idea that the government is gathering every single phone call on AT&T for example is actually a better fact than if they grabbed a few selected streams.  It's the same as making a personal phone call on a crowded subway and making the same phone call in an elevator with one other person.  The volume of data provides an anonymity that is just fine for almost all of us other than the drug dealer, terrorist or other doer of consistently illegal deeds.  

I am a liberal so yeah, I know that the government is doing something they maybe shouldn't and yeah the slippery slope and yeah in a few years big brother will have a live stream to someone in the CIA watching me in the bathroom and all of that, but knowing the way most of us use tech and the billions of pieces of data we are pouring into the system, I just don't care all that much.  

Wish they'd do it in a more transparent way and wish they can find a way to further refine this to target the bad guys but if not? (shrugging shoulders).  

This is one of the issues in principle and not reality type deals IMHO.

But, as the apologists are so fond of saying, things are different now.

The Bush and Obama administrations have together created an elegantly logical box. Most likely through a memo from the Office of Legal Counsel, one or both administrations have persuaded themselves that sucking up the phone records of all Americans is legal. Neither administration has shared that memo, and both have benefited from another part of the Patriot Act that prevents them from having to share it.