PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program. It is an internal government computer system used to facilitate the government’s statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision
But he's not even denying that they directly collect information from those companies. It could be that the slideshow is misleading and PRISM is not the collection program but just the interface to the databanks from the collection program.
But we aren't upset about what PRISM is doing we are upset about what the NSA is doing. So clearing PRISM's name is pointless and could just be a way to mislead without directly lying. Or he may just be lying.
I don't think that Glenn Greenwald would stake his reputation on just a PowerPoint. He claims on Twitter that he has "highly detailed technical NSA materials on how they eavesdrop". [1] Though I'm not sure if that is a reference to the telecom spying or Internet spying.
These are the key words. It appears to be a pipeline, from government to independent corporate networks. The government uses this "system" to retrieve whatever they want to retrieve, and whenever they want to retrieve, the information from independent corporations, following of course the legal procedures.
They aren't telling, and that may be telling on itself. Court approval apparently is needed but then Verizon hands all metadata every day, based on a court approval.
