# PRISM **The [[FISA Section 702]] collection stream in which U.S. internet companies hand over the accounts of designated foreign targets** — emails, chats, stored files, photos, video calls. Revealed in June 2013 by the *[[Washington Post]]* and the *Guardian* ([[Glenn Greenwald]]) from documents supplied by [[Edward Snowden]], it became the public face of the [[Snowden Revelations]]. The government's own term for it is "downstream" collection. ## How it works The [[NSA]] designates a "selector" — an email address or account belonging to a non-U.S. person reasonably believed to be abroad — under a certification the [[FISA Court]] has approved. The [[FBI]] acts as the intermediary with the company, which turns over the account's communications. According to the leaked slides, participants joined in sequence: [[Microsoft]] (2007), Yahoo (2008), [[Google]] and [[Facebook]] (2009), PalTalk (2009), [[YouTube]] (2010), Skype and AOL (2011), and [[Apple]] (2012). The slides' phrase "direct access" to company servers set off a fight the companies won on the narrow point and lost on the larger one. They did not hand the NSA open access to their servers; they did build systems for responding quickly and at scale to compelled requests (see [[NSA-Tech Company Relationships]]). ## Why it matters PRISM is the larger of 702's two streams; [[Upstream Collection]] is the other. Because targets talk to Americans, PRISM data holds large volumes of Americans' messages, and that data is what the FBI's warrantless "backdoor searches" query. Every 702 reform debate since 2013 is in practice a debate over what may be done with PRISM data once it is in government databases. PRISM collection did not stop when Section 702 lapsed on June 12, 2026: directives issued under the March 2026 certifications are grandfathered until March 2027. See [[FISA Section 702 Renewal 2026]]. ## See Also - [[FISA Section 702]] — the authority it runs under - [[Upstream Collection]] — the other 702 stream - [[Snowden Revelations]] — how the public learned of it - [[NSA-Tech Company Relationships]] — the corporate side - [[Surveillance Capitalism]] — the commercial data infrastructure it draws on