Court Order told Yahoo that Prism does not require a warrant [pdf]

&#x27;Yonatan Zunger, the chief architect of Google+, wrote in a Google+ post today that: &quot;I can tell you that the only way in which Google reveals information about users are when we receive lawful, specific orders about individuals -- things like search warrants.&quot;&#x27;<p>From the court order: &quot;We add, moreover, that there is a high degree of probability that requiring a warrant wound hinder the government&#x27;s ability to collect time-sensitive information and, thus, would impede the vital national security interests that are at stake.&quot; <i>Cough</i>

Because these are FISA requests for individuals &quot;reasonably suspected to be residing outside the U.S.&quot;. Those have never required warrants. Before FISA existed they just did it to whomever they pleased; now it requires a FISA request which is not the same thing as a warrant.<p>Nowhere in that document does it say anything about not needing a warrant to get information on U.S. citizens residing in the U.S. What it does actually say is<p><i>For these reasons, we hold that a foreign intelligence exception to the Fourth Amendment&#x27;s warrant requirement exists when surveillance is conducted to obtain foreign intelligence for national security purposes and is directed against foreign powers or agents of foreign powers reasonably believed to be located outside the United States.</i><p>I.e. a FISA request.

The petitioner is redacted, so why does the title presume it to be Yahoo? Did I miss something?<p>Also, PRISM is an acronym for Planning Tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management. Could people please stop abusing it as a term for whatever random scary thing they want to believe the NSA is doing?

&quot;...the petition requires us to weigh the nation&#x27;s security interests against the Fourth Amendment privacy interests of United States persons.&quot;<p>The text Fourth Amendment doesn&#x27;t narrow itself to &quot;United States Persons&quot;. It says:<p>&quot;The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.&quot;

It is so strange to see a judgment reference a previous case as Re Sealed Case.<p>It feels like the judge is stating: The authority for this principle can be found in Black Box.<p>It may be justified for civil cases to be held in secret. After all, civil cases can be resolved by mediation, arbitration, even just negotiation. When the matter concerns a petition against the government however, or against a law, there is no reason for the case to be sealed or secret.<p>Whats next, the congress voted in a closed secret session a new secret law?

Can anybody decode this jibberish? Is it any wonder our rights are being violated by lawyers, lawyers-turned-lawmakers, and lawyers-turned-judges?

The Protect America Act still exists? Why isn&#x27;t there more discussion about it?

Wait, are there actually people in the US who still assume that there someone has to get a warrant to investigate them under the auspices of terrorism or National Security? I assumed this was a more or less accepted fact by now.<p>They take everything they want off the wire anyway; the best case scenario is that they have FISA rubber stamp warrants for the times where they &quot;need a warrant&quot;.<p>Do we really care about specific instances of uses of PRISM? I mean, in an honest way I&#x27;m curious :: is there really any benefit if we could definitely prove that PRISM was used without a warrant? Is it worse than any of the other things that have been disclosed or leaked since originally finding out about PRISM?<p>I don&#x27;t think so, but I was screaming bloody murder about NSLs in 2006, soooo......

The NSA has specifically stated that they have the ability to preliminarily gather data through PRISM a week before going to FISC for a warrant. What is presented to the judge as evidence is usually that very collected data.