Polls suggest that many Americans are not that concerned about the National Security Agency's PRISM program. As the government has sought to shroud the program behind promises of foiled plots and pursuit of foreign terrorists, Americans seem to have concluded that the program will not affect them. But while many details about the process are still classified and subject to speculation, one only need to look at the government's interpretation of existing law and regulation to conclude that PRISM can have unintended consequences for your average American. In fact, when combined with already existing legal precedent, PRISM legalizes the use of our private lives against us.
According to James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, the program's legal justification is based on an interpretation of §702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That law is designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-Americans, and as the NSA recently announced, cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen. But as a number of lawmakers with classified knowledge of the subject have confirmed, this characterization is misleadingly incomplete (http://goo.gl/kXNVU).
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