Remember the NSA's PRISM? In a ruling issued last month, federal judge John Gleeson became the first official to admit the existence of the NSA's notorious PRISM program. As you will remember, it was a program that gained the limelight after the leakage of a document by Edward Snowden in 2013. 
The program allows for “data collection directly from the server” of American technology companies, such as Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Google, AOL and many others.
These companies immediately after the rage of the 2013 news claim that they did not know the program and that none of them gave access to the NSA.
So while the public knew its existence by 2013, none of the secret services nor President Obama admitted openly the existence of the program.
But all of them knew about the NSA's success in spying on me programs όπως το PRISM και διακήρυσσαν ότι οι προσπάθειες της μυστικής υπηρεσίας σταμάτησαν δεκάδες τρομοκρατικών attacks. The PRISM program was based on the rather vague Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Information Act (FISA).
Section 702 also allowed the Upstream Collection, a method that gives the NSA access to raw data on the Internet and distinguishes between two programs (Upstream - PRISM) a burdensome proposition for defendants and their lawyers.
Today, the federal court's decision marked the first time a distinction was made between the two government programs.
This case concerned Agron Hasbajrami, an Albanian citizen accused of conspiracy when he tried to travel to Pakistan to join a militant jihad group.
His arrest was possible when the NSA began to track through the PRISM program and managed to gain control over the communication of people who came into contact with Hasbajrami.
"To our knowledge, this is the first case where the targeted use of PRISM has been formally reported," said Andrew Crocker, an attorney for Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and counsel to Hasbajrami and other NSA defendants.
The distinction between programs is important, as up to now, the NSA has not verified the existence of the PRISM program.
Now, undoubtedly it could lead to greater transparency in the talks on government monitoring programs, but that is probably a wishful thinking.
