New insights into the PRISM program

(Updated: January 21, 2016)

Last Saturday, June 29, the Washington Post unexpectedly disclosed four new slides from the powerpoint presentation about the PRISM data collection program.

This disclosure came as a surprise, because earlier, Guardian-journalist Glenn Greenwald said that no more slides would be published because they contain very specific technical NSA means for collection, for which The Guardian would probably be prosecuted.

That The Washington Post now disclosed them, is even more surprising, not only because it's an American paper, but also because it's said that Edward Snowden initially went to The Post asking to publish all 41 slides of the PRISM presentation. But The Washington Post refused to do so and therefore Snowden gave the scoop to The Guardian, which published the first four slides.

It's not clear who exactly released the four new slides, whether it was Snowden himself or editors of The Washington Post, and what the reason was for doing it. Allthough these new slides show some of the same oddities we already saw in the first series, these new ones have a very specific and detailed content. This makes them look far more genuine and, more importantly, show much better how PRISM actually works.

We now learn that PRISM is not one single technical system or computer application, but a data collecting project which combines a number of different tools, computer systems and databases, some existing, some maybe new. This also means that this PRISM program is not the same thing as the Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management (PRISM), a theory which was examined in our previous posting.

> The latest information: What is known about NSA's PRISM program

- The PRISM tasking process - Different tasking tools - The actual data collection -

- Storage of collected PRISM data - Analysing collected data - PRISM case notations -

- Searching the collected data - Links and Sources -

The PRISM tasking process

In this first new slide (below) we see details of the PRISM Tasking Process, which is how instructions for gathering the requested data are sent and reviewed. This process starts with an NSA analyst typing one or more search terms, or "selectors" as NSA calls them, into the Unified Targeting Tool (UTT). Selectors may refer to people (by name, e-mail address, phone number or some other digital signature), organizations or subjects such as terrorism or uranium related terms.

Along with the selectors, the analyst must fill out an electronic form that specifies the foreign-intelligence purpose of the search and the basis for the analyst’s reasonable belief that the search will not return results for US citizens or foreign nationals who are within the US at the time of data collection.

The slide shows that it's possible to search existing communications that are already stored ("Stored Comms") and also to initiate a search for new, future communications of selected targets. The latter option is called "Surveillance", which by a number of media was erroneously interpreted as the possibility of real-time monitoring of for example an internet chat.

Every request made by a target analyst must be approved twice. For new surveillance requests, an FAA Adjudicator (S2) does the first review and validation of the target. The slide says that there are such adjudicators in every so-called Product Line, which are the NSA departments for specific issues like counter terrorism and couter proliferation. A second and final review of the analysts' determination is done by NSA unit S343 for Targeting and Mission Management, which then releases the tasking request through the Unified Targeting Tool. Then it's apparently a computer system called PRINTAURA which distributes the requests to the different collection sites.

For searching stored communications, the first check is done by the Special FISA Oversight and Processing unit (SV4). According to The Washington Post this seems to refer to the federal judges of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), but according to national security reporter Marc Ambinder, the "FISA Oversight and Processing" is an internal NSA unit. The second and final review is once again done by unit S343 for Targeting and Mission Management. After the request is released to PRINTAURA, the Electronic Communications Surveillance Unit (ECSU) of the FBI checks against its own database to filter out known Americans.


Different tasking tools

In another source the Unified Targeting Tool (UTT) is described as a DNR tasking tool, which means it's a software program used to send so called tasking instructions to dedicated devices, telling them which data should be collected. As DNR stands for Dial Number Recognition, this sounds like the targeting tool is aimed at finding out who is behind a certain phone number, but as NSA sources often mention DNR equal to DNI (Digital Network Intelligence or internet content), it seems DNR stands for information derived from telephone networks in general.

According to one of the earlier slides, NSA analysts should also use other sources, like data which can be gathered through access points that tap into the internet’s main gateway switches ("Upstream collection"). This is done through collection programs codenamed FAIRVIEW, STORMBREW, BLARNEY and OAKSTAR. Allthough by its name the Unified Targeting Tool (UTT) seems to be of a generic nature, it's not clear whether it can be used also for tasking these other sources, or that they need other tasking tools. According to the book "Der NSA Komplex" the UTT replaced the OCTAVE telephony tasking system in 2011.*

Screenshot of the Unified Targeting Tool (UTT) showing how to select a "Foreigness Factor"
(note the URL in the address bar starting with "gamut")

From a number of job descriptions we learn that this Unified Targeting Tool is often mentioned in connection to GAMUT and sometimes also to CADENCE. We see this written like "GAMUT-UNIFIED TARGETING TOOL", "GAMUT/UTT" or "CADENCE/UTT". Both GAMUT and CADENCE are nicknames for what is said to be a "collection mission system for tasking" and probably refer to databases which store the tasking requests from the Unified Targeting Tool.

An interesting coincedence is that the word gamut means a range of colors that can be reproduced by a certain technique - like a prism can break light up into its constituent spectral colors.

More important is that the new slide shows that for PRISM the Unified Targeting Tool (UTT) is used for tasking, which means that this PRISM program is different from the Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management (PRISM), which itself is a tasking tool. Before the new slides were released, The Guardian and The Washington Post failed to explain whether PRISM was a single application or a project-like program.

Infographic comparing the PRISM data collection program and the PRISM planning tool
(click for a bigger picture)

Now we know that the PRISM planning tool isn't the application used for tasking the data collection from the internet companies, it's also clear that the PRISM planning tool is used primarily for requesting information needed for military operations and therefore tasks various intelligence sources deployed to those operations. By contrast, the Unified Tasking Tool used under the PRISM program is for requesting information on the national level.


The actual data collection

The actual collecting of the internet data under the PRISM program is not done by the NSA, but by the Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU) of the FBI. This makes sense, as the FBI is the agency which is primarily responsible for investigating US companies and citizens.

From one source it seems that the Data Intercept Technology Unit was set up in 2011 or 2012 to monitor new and emerging technology with court-authorized intercepts, but this source (pdf) says that it already existed in 1997. There's a challenge coin of DITU (right) dating from after 9/11, as it shows pictures of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In it's comments on this slide, The Washington Post says this FBI "interception unit [is] on the premises of private companies", which isn't the case as DITU is an FBI unit based at Quantico, Virginia. They can have equipment installed at sites of the internet companies, but for that no evidence is presented, making one author questioning whether there is such equipment at all.

Initially the DITU managed the FBI's internet monitoring programs Omnivore and Carnivore, tapping into the internet at ISP locations. The raw data were decoded by using the Packeteer en Coolminer tools, as can be read in this document (pdf) from 2010, but according to the PRISM-reporting, the unit can now also order data from companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and others directly.

A new report by Declan McCullagh says that internet companies don't want the FBI to install listening devices on their networks. In order to prevent that, they are willing to cooperate with the FBI by adding their own monitoring capabalities to their network and server equipment, which makes it easier for them to comply with government information requests. This would mean that there's no need for dedicated FBI data collecting devices at the companies premises.

Earlier, Google said that when it receives a valid FISA court order, it delivers the information to the US government through secure FTP transfers or in person. Another option is doing this by using an encrypted dropbox, where an internet company can drop the requested data. Facebook and Microsoft said they will only hand over data or information about specific individuals upon receiving a legally binding order or subpoena.

Depending on the company, a PRISM-tasking may return e-mails, attachments, address books, calendars, files stored in the cloud, text or audio or video chats and metadata that identify the locations, devices used and other information about a target. After collecting, the FBI's Data Intercept Technology Unit passes this information to one or more so called customers at the NSA, the CIA or the FBI itself.


Storage of collected PRISM data

A second slide (below) shows how collected data flows into the various NSA servers. It's the Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU) of the FBI which collects raw data from the internet companies, and sends them to the NSA. At NSA the data first go to a system called PRINTAURA, which, according to the Washington Post, automates the traffic flow.

As PRINTAURA also distributes the tasking requests, it seems this system is the technical heart of the PRISM program, which may also be indicated by the fact that both nicknames/codewords start with the same three letters. As we learn from the slide, PRINTAURA is managed by NSA unit S3532.

All NSA offices, operations, units and cells have their own designation, consisting of a letter, followed by some numbers. We remember that the first slide of the PRISM presentation has a line which says "[...] PRISM Collection Manager, S35333". This means the author of the slides was a collection manager attached to unit S35333, which, just like the PRINTAURA unit S3532, is part of the S35 or Special Source Operations (SSO) division according to this NSA orgchart.

From PRINTAURA data go to a database called TRAFFICTHIEF, which according to this article was set up as part of the TURBULANCE program to detect threats in cyberspace. From a slide about the XKeyscore tool, published by The Guardian on July 29, we learn that TRAFFICTHIEF is a database for metadata about specifically selected e-mail addresses.

Data to be processed are send to a system called SCISSORS, which is managed by unit T132, and from there onto unit S3132 for "Protocol Exploitation". This does the processing of something which is blacked out - probably the specific classified codeword used for these internet data.

This processing sorts the data into different types and protocols and dispatches them to the various NSA databases for storage. But before that, metadata and voice content have to pass FALLOUT and CONVEYANCE. According to the Washington Post, these systems appear to be a final layer of filtering to reduce the intake of information about Americans, but an internal NSA document describes FALLOUT as a "DNI ingest processor". All other data once again pass the SCISSORS system.

Finally, the collected data are stored in the following databases:
- MARINA: for internet metadata
- MAINWAY: for telephone and internet metadata contact chaining
- NUCLEON: for voice content
- PINWALE: contrary to what many other media say, this database is not only for video content, but also for "FAA partitions" and "DNI content". DNI stands for Digital Network Intelligence, which is intelligence derived from digital networks, or simply: internet content, like forum postings and e-mail and chat messages. The word PINWALE is often combined with the abbreviation UIS, which stands for User Interface Services, apparently an interface tool for accessing and searching databases.


Analysing collected data

There are no slides available saying what happens with these data after being stored, but The Washington Post says that "After processing, [collected data] are automatically sent to the analyst who made the original tasking. The time elapsed from tasking to response is thought to range from minutes to hours. A senior intelligence official would say only, Much though we might wish otherwise, the latency is not zero."

At the moment it's not clear which tool or application is used to analyse the data gathered from the US internet companies. National security reporter Marc Ambinder says that PRISM itself might be "a kick-ass GUI [graphic user interface] that allows an analyst to look at, collate, monitor, and cross-check different data types". However, until now there's no evidence for PRISM being such a tool for analysis.

Most tools used by NSA employees are listed in job descriptions and the PRISM we see there is always the Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management, that we talked about in our previous posting.

Therefore, it's likely that data gathered under the PRISM program are analysed using other common NSA analysing tools, like the XKEYSCORE indexing and analysing tool, which The Guardian erroneously presented as a collection program, or a more specific tool called DNI Presenter, which is used to read the content of stored e-mails and chats or private messages from Facebook and other social networks.

Based upon what such analysis presents, NSA analysts use other tools, like CPE (Content Preparation Environment), to write a report. Such reports are then stored in databases for finished NSA intelligence products, like ANCHORY. Finally, these intelligence reports are available to end users through the Top Secret section of INTELINK, which is the intranet of the US intelligence community.


PRISM case notations

A third slide (below) shows how each target gets a unique PRISM case notation and what the components of these notations are.

Abbreviations: IM = Instant Messaging; RTN-EDC = Real Time Notification-Electronic Data Communication(?);
RTN-IM = Real Time Notification-Instant Messaging; OSN = Online Social Networking; CASN = Case Notation

The first position is the designation for each of the providers from which internet data are collected. Some people noticed the numbers jumped from P8 for AOL to PA for Apple, but someone suggests that P9 was maybe assigned to a company that fell out, and that the numbers may be hexadecimal, so the next provider will be PB, followed by PC, etc., as B = 11, C = 12, etc.

The next position of the case notation is a single letter, designating the content type, like e-mail and chat messages, social network postings, but also so-called real-time notifications (RTN) for e-mail and chat events. The Washington Post and other media apparently misinterpreted this by saying that NSA officials "may receive live notifications when a target logs on or sends an e-mail, or may monitor a voice, text or voice chat as it happens".

(Update: compare this to the data analysing tool TAC, which is used by the Defense Intelligence Agency and offers "real-time analysis of data" by alerting "analysts immediately when fresh intelligence is detected".)

In the slide, the real-time notifications are clearly listed as being "Content Type" and most of us will know them as the messages you get when someone logs in at an internet chatroom or an instant messenger, or when you receive an e-mail through an e-mail client. These notification messages are also available for NSA analysts, but only after being collected and stored, just like all other types of internet content.


Searching the collected data

The fourth new slide (below) is presented by The Washington Post as being about "Searching the PRISM database", but as we just learned from the dataflow slide, there is no single PRISM-database. Data collected from the internet companies go into separate databases, according to the type of data. Some of these databases already existed before the PRISM program was started in 2007.

The content of the slide shows a screenshot of a web based application called REPRISMFISA, which is probably accessible through the web address which is blacked out by the Post. Unfortunately there's no further explanation of what application we see here, but if we look at the word REPRISMFISA we can imagine the application is for going "back to data collected under the PRISM program according to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)". Remember also that in one of the earlier slides it's said: "Complete list and details on PRISM web page: Go PRISMFAA".

Above the olive green bar, there is a line saying: "DYNAMIC PAGE - HIGHEST POSSIBLE CLASSIFICATION IS TOP SECRET // [blacked out] / SI / TK // ORCON // NOFORN" This means that depending on the generated content of the page, it has to be classified as TOP SECRET, with additionally one or several of the following Sensitive Compartmented Information control systems:
- TALENT KEYHOLE (TK - for data collected by space-based collection platforms)
- Special Intelligence (SI - for data from communications intercepts)
- an undisclosed control system marked by a classified codeword, which is blacked out by The Washington Post. Probably this is the codeword used for information which is based upon data derived from the internet companies. As said earlier, "PRISM" is not a codeword used for content, but rather the (unclassified) nickname of the program for collecting certain internet data.

In the center of the page there are three icons, which can be clicked: PRISM, FBI FISA and DOJ FISA. This seems to confirm that this application is used to search data collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), specified for use by NSA, FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Below these icons there is a search field, to get a partial list of records. The search options seem rather limited, as only two keywords can be entered, with an additonal "and/or" option. At the left there's a column presenting a number of options for showing totals of PRISM entries. For checking the record status, one can click the following options:
- See Entire List (Current)
- See Entire List (Expired)
- See Entire List (Current and Expired)
- See NSA List
- See New Records
- Ownership count

Below this list, the text says: "If the total count is much less than this, REPRISMFISA is having issues, E-MAIL the REPRISMFISA HELP DESK AT [address blacked out] AND INFORM THEM"

The numbers below that text are hardly readable, but the Washington Post says that on "April 5, according to this slide, there were 117,675 active surveillance targets in PRISM's counterterrorism database". This sounds like a huge number, but without any further details about these targets it's almost impossible to give some meaningful opinion about it.

(Updated with minor additions and corrections based upon recently disclosed documents)


Links and Sources

- ForeignPolicy.com: Meet the Spies Doing the NSA's Dirty Work
- TheWeek.com: Solving the mystery of PRISM
- ForeignPolicy.com: Evil in a Haystack
- WashingtonPost.com: Inner workings of a top-secret spy program
- TechDirt.com: Newly Leaked NSA Slides On PRISM Add To Confusion, Rather Than Clear It Up
- Technovia.co.uk: Something doesn’t add up in the lastest Washington Post PRISM story
- VanityFair.com: PRISM Isn’t Data Mining and Other Falsehoods in the N.S.A. “Scandal”
- CNet.com: FBI: We need wiretap-ready Web sites - now (2012)
- CNet.com: How the U.S. forces Net firms to cooperate on surveillance

Is PRISM just a not-so-secret web tool?

(Updated with an infographic on June 30, 2013)

Since The Guardian first published about the PRISM data collection program on June 6, there have been new disclosures of top secret documents almost every day, resulting in some fierce protests against apparently illegal wiretapping by the NSA and GCHQ. However, it remains unclear what PRISM actually is or does, as The Guardian didn't provide any new details or disclosed more than 5 of the 41 presentation slides about the program.

This makes it hard to determine whether PRISM really is the illegal or at least embarrassing program which most people now think it is. Especially, because it could even be the hardly secret Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management (PRISM), which is a web-based tool to manage information requests widely used by the US military. Here we will take a closer look at this program and try to determine whether this could be the same as the PRISM revealed by The Guardian.

> The latest information: What is known about NSA's PRISM program

Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management

The earliest document which mentions the Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management (PRISM) is a paper (pdf) from July 2002, which was prepared by the MITRE Corporation Center for Integrated Intelligence Systems. The document describes the use of web browsers for military operations, the so-called "web-centric warfare", for which intelligence collection management programs were seen as the catalyst. These programs fuse battlefield intelligence information with the national data that they already possess, in order to provide a complete picture to their users.

PRISM was developed by SAIC (formerly Science Applications International Corporation, a company that was also involved in the 2002 TRAILBLAZER program for analyzing network data). The program was originally prototyped and fielded for the US European Command, but is also being used in other military operation areas such as Iraq. Involved in the establishment of PRISM was Ron Baham. His LinkedIn profile says that he currently is senior vice president and operations manager at SAIC and that he worked on CMMA PRISM at JDISS from 2000 - 2004, so PRISM might be developed somewhere between 2000 and early 2002.

On an older page of its website, SAIC says that the PRISM application allows theater users, in various functional roles and at different echelons, to synchronize Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) requirements with current military operations and priorities. The application was first developed for use on JWICS, the highly secure intelligence community network, but is now also being used on SIPRNet, the secure internet used by the US military.

Screenshot of the PRISM Input Tool (EEI = Essential Elements of Intelligence)
source: GMTI Utility Analysis for Airborne Assets (pdf)

Other sources clarify that PRISM consists of a web-based interface which connects to PRISM servers, and that it's used by a variety of users, like intelligence collection managers at military headquarters, to request the intelligence information which is needed for operations. These requests are entered in the PRISM interface, which sends them to the PRISM server. From there the request goes to units which collect the raw data. These are processed into intelligence, which then becomes available through the PRISM server.

PRISM is able to manage and prioritize these intelligence collection requirements to ensure critical intelligence is timely available to the commander during crisis operations. The application integrates these requirements and, with other tools, generates the so called daily collection deck. PRISM also provides traceability throughout the so-called intelligence cycle, from planning through exploitation to production.

The PRISM application made by SAIC is still widely used. It's mentioned in joint operations manuals from 2012 and in quite a number of job descriptions, like this one from March 2013 for a systems administator in Doha, Qatar, which says that part of the job is providing on-site and off-site PRISM training and support. Also these US government spending data show that in 2011 a maintaince contract (worth $ 1.085.464,-) for PRISM support services was awarded to SAIC, with options for 2012 and 2013.


Are there two different PRISMs?

So now it looks like as if there are two different programs called PRISM: one is a web-based tool for requesting and managing intelligence information from a server that gets input from various intelligence sources. The other is the program from which The Guardian says it's a top secret electronic surveillance program that collects raw data from the servers of nine major US internet companies.

If the Guardian's claims are true, it's strange that two important intelligence programs apparently have the exact same name. For sure, this would not be very likely, if "PRISM" would be an acronym or a codeword in both cases. But if we assume one PRISM being an acronym and the other PRISM a codeword, it could be somewhat more likely.

As we know, the PRISM tool developed by SAIC is an acronym, just like the names of many other military and intelligence software tools are often lengthy acronyms. This leaves the PRISM which was unveiled by The Guardian likely to be a codeword, or more correctly said, a nickname. NSA data collection methods, officially designated by an alphanumerical SIGAD like US-984, can have nicknames which may or may not be classified.

These are different from codenames, which are always classified and often assigned to the intelligence products from the various data collection methods. This can cause some confusion, as "PRISM" perfectly fits in the NSA tradition of using 5-letter codewords for products of sensitive Signals Intelligence programs.

If PRISM had been a classified codename, it should also have been part of the classification line, and the marking should have read TOP SECRET // SI-PRISM // [...] instead of the current TOP SECRET // SI // [...]. This indicates that if there are two PRISMs, and one is an acronym, the other PRISM isn't a codeword for intelligence from a specific source, but most likely the unclassified nickname of a collection method.

This still leaves the question of why in 2007 an apparently new collection program got a nickname which is exactly the same as the acronym of an already widely used computer application - which is even going to be one of its tasking systems.


A less spectacular PRISM?

Allthough The Guardian presented PRISM as a method of directly collecting raw data from major internet companies, other sources say that PRISM might well be a much less spectacular internal computer program.

Initially, The Washington Post came with the same story as The Guardian, but revised some of its claims by citing a classified report from the NSA Inspector General that describes PRISM as allowing "collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations." These words very much resemble the way the PRISM Planning Tool is described.

National security reporter Marc Ambinder describes PRISM as "a kick-ass GUI (Graphical User Interface) that allows an analyst to look at, collate, monitor, and cross-check different data types provided to the NSA from Internet companies located inside the United States" - which also sounds much more like the SAIC application, than like a data dragnet with free access to commercial company servers.

This view was also confirmed by a statement (pdf) of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, which says: "PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program. It is an internal government computer system used to facilitate the government’s [...] collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers [...]".

With this statement, Clapper officially confirms the existance of a program called PRISM, and allthough his description could also fit that of the Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management, he didn't positively identified PRISM as such.

Finally, an anonymous former government official told CNet.com that The Guardian's reports are "incorrect and appear to be based on a misreading of a leaked Powerpoint document", making journalist Declan McCullagh go one step further by suggesting that PRISM might be actually the same as the web application named Planning Tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management.


PRISM as an all-source planning tool

Some sources, like a joint operations manual and a number of job descriptions, seem to indicate that the PRISM planning tool is primarily used for geospational intelligence (GEOINT), which is analysed imagery of the earth as collected by spy planes and satellites.

However, more extensive research has shown that the Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management (PRISM) is not only used for geospatial intelligence, but for fusing intelligence from all sources. Besides GEOINT, sources prove that PRISM is also used for SIGINT (Signals Intelligence), IMINT (Imagery Intelligence) and HUMINT (Human Intelligence), probably through additional modules for each of these sources.

Even the 2006 Geospatial Intelligence Basic Doctrine (pdf) says PRISM is a "web-based application that provides users, at the theater level and below, with the ability to conduct Integrated Collection Management (ICM). Integrates all intelligence discipline assets with all theater requirements."
More specifically, the 2012 Joint and National Intelligence Support to Military Operations manual describes that where applicable, requests for SIGINT support should be entered into approved systems such as PRISM, for approval by a military commander.

In a job description for an Intelligence Training Instructor from 2010 we see a distinction being made between PRISM-IMINT and PRISM-SIGINT, and a LinkedIn profile mentions the IMINT/SIGINT PRISM training in 2006 of someone who was administrator for PRISM, which is described as the system of record USCENTCOM uses for submitting, tracking, and researching theater ISR requirements. In a job description for a SIGINT Collection Management Analyst (by Snowden-employer Booz Allen Hamilton!) experience with PRISM is required too.

Also a module was added to PRISM for accessing information from HUMINT (Human Intelligence) sources. Testing of this module was done during the Empire Challenge 2008 exercise. In the daily reports of this exercise we can read that for example the Defense Intelligence Agency's HUMINT team loaded "additional data into PRISM HUMINT module for operations on Tuesday morning". From a French report about this exercise we learn that the PRISM HUMINT module was a new application, just like the Humint Online Tasking & Reporting (HOT-R) tool, which runs on SIPRNet. This indicates that modules for different -INTs were added gradually in time.


Are both PRISMs one and the same?

If The Guardian's PRISM really is just a computer system for sending tasking instructions to equipment that collects the raw data, it is hard to believe that it's different from the Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management (PRISM), which for many years is used to order and manage intelligence from all sources.

If this could be true, and there's only one PRISM program, what about the slides which were disclosed by The Guardian? First of all, as this newspaper is not willing to publish all PRISM-slides, we cannot be sure about what this presentation is really about, but it's possible that it's not about a PRISM which is the nickname of the US-984XN collection method, but about how to gather material from that source by using the PRISM web tool. This way around, the SIGAD US-984XN can still deliver for most NSA reporting, including the President's Daily Brief.

More specific, we can think of a machine-to-machine interface between the PRISM system and dedicated data collection devices at remote locations, like a secure FTP server or an encrypted dropbox at sites of the internet companies. At the PRISM desktop interface this tasking may be done through a separate SIGINT module. As one of the slides says: "Complete list and details on PRISM web page: Go PRISMFAA" we can even imagine a module called "PRISM FAA" for requesting intelligence from intercepts of foreign communications under the conditions of the FISA Amendment Act (FAA) from 2008.

Infographic of the PRISM Planning Tool as part of the Intelligence Cycle,
with a possible way of how it could be the same as the
PRISM internet data collection program
(click for a bigger picture)

By publishing the PRISM slides, The Guardian for the first time revealed evidence about the NSA collecting data from major internet companies. But as this apparently surprised the general public, the practice is hardly new. Spies and later intelligence agencies of all countries have always tried to intercept foreign communications and of course tried to do this with every new way of communication: first letters, later phonecalls and radio communications, and nowadays internet based social media. Therefore, it may hardly come as a surprise that NSA found ways to intercept those new means of communications too.

What looks more of a problem, is the fact that in the past, enemies were nation states, which could be targeted by focussing on diplomatic and military communications, leaving most people's privacy untouched. Nowadays, with terrorism considered as the main enemy, almost every (foreign) citizen could be a potential adversary. This made intelligence agencies try to search everyone's communications, which are also more internationally intertwined than ever before.


Next time we will discuss more specific details of the Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management (PRISM), as this gives an interesting look at internal intelligence procedures.


Links

- TheWeek.com: Is the NSA PRISM leak much less than it seems?
- CNet.com: What is the NSA's PRISM program? (FAQ)
- CNet.com: No evidence of NSA's 'direct access' to tech companies
- VanityFair.com: PRISM Isn’t Data Mining and Other Falsehoods in the N.S.A. “Scandal”
- ExtremeTech.com: Making sense of the NSA Prism leak as the real details emerge
- Medium.com: The PRISM Details Matter
- Reflets.info: #PRISM: let’s have a look at the big picture
- VanityFair.com: PRISM Isn’t Data Mining and Other Falsehoods in the N.S.A. “Scandal” - Mashable.com: See How PRISM May Work — in This Infographic
- ZDNet.com: How did mainstream media get the NSA PRISM story so hopelessly wrong?

Abbreviations, Acronyms, Nicknames and Codewords

The communications security and intelligence branch is notorious for its abbreviations, acronyms, nicknames and codewords, and recently we learned a number of new NSA codewords from many classified documents which Edward Snowden handed over to The Guardian.

Here we provide two listings, one of abbreviations and acronyms, and one of nicknames and codewords, to get somewhat more grip on these things:

- Abbreviations and Acronyms

- Nicknames and Codewords

Listings like this can never be complete, and therefore expect new entries to be added gradually, as well as updates of existing entries.

Are the NSA's PRISM slides photoshopped?

(Updated: June 10, 2013)

Yesterday, Thursday June 6, The Washington Post and The Guardian came with a breaking news story about a Top Secret NSA program called PRISM, which reportedly collects data directly from the servers of nine major internet companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Skype and Apple.

Many of these firms have already denied that the government has access to their networks. Today both president Obama and director of National Intelligence James Clapper said there is no gathering of information about US citizens or of any person located within the United States.

> The latest information: What is known about NSA's PRISM program


The Guardian claimed to have obtained 41 slides of an NSA presentation about the PRISM collection program, and showed some of them on its website. But some strange looking details caused a number of people, especially on Twitter, think the slides might be fake.

Here we take a more close look at these slides, which, if genuine, give a very rare look at a recent Top Secret document from the US National Security Agency.

The strangest thing about the slides is probably the PRISM program logo, which is shown at the top right side of each slide. On the Guardian website this logo is also shown separately with an orange background box - the same way it appears on their slides. But as we look at the same slides on the website of The Washington Post, we see that the orange background has been cropped away.

This can only mean that the logo was added somewhere afterwards, and therefore wasn't part of the original slide deck. On Twitter, it was also noticed, that the PRISM logo was made by using a standard clipart image.

UPDATE:
One of the journalists of The Guardian explained on twitter, that these differences between the slides are caused by using different powerpoint readers (The Guardian using OpenOffice).



Details and explanation of the first PRISM slide

This does not automatically mean the whole slide deck is fake, so let's take a closer look at the rest of the slide contents:

- At the top left and the bottom right corner of each slide we see the standardized classification marking line, showing the classification level and the dissemination control markings. In this case the slides are marked: TOP SECRET // SI // ORCON // NOFORN, which combines:

TOP SECRET - the classification level, meaning that public disclosure of the document would cause 'exceptionally grave damage' to national security.

SI - Special Intelligence, formerly known as COMINT or COMmunications INTelligence, which means this document is part of a control system for Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI).

ORCON - ORiginator CONtrolled, meaning the originator controls dissemination and/or release of the document. Therefore these are always viewed in secured areas that are cleared for top-secret data and one cannot view or copy such a document without leaving an audit trail.

NOFORN - NO FOReign Nationals, meaning distribution to non-US citizens is prohibited, regardless of their clearance or access permissions.

- At the top of each slide we also see the logos of the internet companies involved in the PRISM program. The way these logos are grouped at the top of each slide looks not very professional, it distracts from the content and there's also no good reason for showing them on every slide. Therefore this part is also seen as a typical photoshop work.

- Top left we also see a seal with the words Special Source Operations, which is a department of the NSA responsible for important intelligence collection programs. This seal cannot be easily found elsewhere on the internet and looks well designed, so is most likely real.

- The title of the presentation is: PRISM/US-984XN Overview or The SIGAD Used Most in NSA Reporting Overview. SIGAD is the abbreviation of SIGINT Activity Designator, which is a unique addresss for every signals intelligence collection station, ship, or method and consists of a country code followed by alphanumeric characters. Thus the second part of the title (The SIGAD Used Most in NSA Reporting) refers to the first part, where US-984XN is the SIGAD of the PRISM program.

- Underneath the title there's a line which is partly (Guardian) or fully (Washington Post) blacked out. From what we can read, this line most likely started with the name of the person being the PRISM collection manager, followed by a kind of service/department number. Understandably the name has been blacked out because of privacy and security reasons, and the American paper even blacked out the rest.

- Finally, at the bottom right we see a red bordered box with three lines:
Derived from: NSA/CSSM 1-52 - meaning this was derived from the NSA/CSS Manual 1-52 about Classified National Security Information, which describes additional responsabilities of holders of NSA/CSS protected information.
Dated: 20070108 - meaning the presentation was derivative of work dated January 8, 2007, which appears to be the date of the NSA/CSS Manual 1-52.
Declassify On: 20360901 - meaning the slide deck was meant to be declassified on September 1, 2036. In general, this has to be 25 years from the date of the document’s origin, which seems to indicate that this presentation was classified on September 1, 2011, allthough the first slide itself is dated April 2013.

After this close look at the first slide of the PRISM presentation we have seen that there are a few strange elements, but also that most of the content looks realistic.



Another difference between the slides

Not only there's a difference between the PRISM logo on the slides at the Guardian and the Washtington Post websites, but, as noticed at this website, also on the slide showing in which years the various internet companies were "added" to the program:

As we can see in the picture, the slide on the Guardian website shows a different green arrow underneath the yellow circles than the Washington Post slide does. Both papers each seem to have some slightly different slides, which is quite strange if they really obtained a copy of such a higly classified slide deck.

UPDATE:
One of the journalists of The Guardian explained on twitter, that these differences between the slides are caused by using different powerpoint readers (The Guardian using OpenOffice).

As the presentation concerns signals intelligence, it has to be handled either trough the highly secured JWICS network used by the US intelligence community, or through NSAnet, which is the classified intranet of the NSA. It looks like PRISM is related to NSAnet, as one of the slides says: "Complete list and details on PRISM web page: Go PRISMFAA". Using a command like this appears to be common practice for NSAnet.

As it is very difficult and risky to get the slides themselves out of NSA's control, it is of course far more easy for someone who has seen the presentation, to tell a journalist what was in it. Then some graphic artist at the newspaper could have made these slides according to what was told to him. In this way, the differences between the slides of both newspapers can easily be explained by an internal messing up of some different versions.



The story revised?

Meanwhile, the Washington Post (because they had rushed the publication?) had to walk back a bit from its initial claims by citing a second classified report that identified PRISM as a program to "allow ‘collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,’ rather than directly to company servers."

Also the New York Times came with a story which says that each of the large internet companies negotiated with the government about handing out information. As far as this concerns non-US citizens, they are legally required to share the data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and in this way these companies are providing intelligence agencies like NSA with specific data in response to individual court orders.

These FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms. Last year there were 1856 of such FISA requests. In order to make this more easy, some companies agreed with NSA to transmit these data electronically, using company’s servers or even government equipment at a company location. This however is different from giving the NSA wholesale bulk access to user data.

This version of the PRISM story was more or less confirmed by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, who released a statement with a fact sheet (PDF), which says "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".



More about classification markings

Earlier on the evening of June 8, The Guardian published another slide, to clarify that PRISM, which involves data collection from servers, is distinct from four different programs involving data collection from "fiber cables and infrastructure as data flows past".

This newest slide (shown left in the picture above) seems to have an omission, which can also be seen in some of the earlier slides: allthough they have the obligatory classification line (as described above), and the slide title is marked with the so called portion marking (the (TS//SI//NF) which is an abbreviation of the full classification line), this portion marking is missing in the content.

As the DoD and intelligence community Classification Markings Manuals prescribe, all content of briefing slides, including bullets, captions, titles, and embedded graphs, charts and figures, have to be marked with portion markings at the beginning of each portion (except when a waiver for the portion marking has been obtained). This because parts of a document classified as Top Secret can have a lower classification level or can even be unclassified, which also clearly applies to some of the paragraphs of the slides.

Again, this omission alone does not mean these slides are fake, it's also possible that the author of the presentation was simply somewhat lazy. At least in case of the slide titled "Introduction. U.S. as World's Telecommunications Backbone" the content is public information, for which the overall Top Secret classification would clearly not be justified.

A correct implementation of the portion marking can be seen in some slides about the NSA's BOUNDLESSINFORMANT data mining tool, which were disclosed by The Guardian on June 8. Here we see the slides are marked as TOP SECRET // SI // NOFORN within an orange bar, which is the color code for Top Secret, but with the separate text portions marked as (U//FOUO) as they are Unclassified // For Official Use Only:

With correct markings and a more professional look, these new slides look more credible than those of the PRISM presentation. As government agencies apparently often produce bad looking presentations, this alone doesn't make the PRISM slides fake, but we always should be aware of things like hoaxes, sensationalism and disinformation from whatever source, and at the same time don't get trapped into conspiracy theories.



Other PRISM programs

As there are still questions about what exactly NSA's PRISM program does, it became clear that there are also a number of other intelligence and security related programs called PRISM, which may cause some confusion:

The journalist Matthew Keys discovered that in 2007 a classified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) intelligence job listing mentions "national intelligence community collection management systems" like PRISM, COLISEUM and HOT-R. A DIA job listing from earlier this year requires "Experience working in collection requirements management systems and procedures, to include PRISM, HOT-R, GIMS, NSRP, TORS, OSCR, COLISEUM, and CMST"

As this are DIA jobs, it seems however that this PRISM system is different from the one of the NSA. At the website of defense contractor IIT, PRISM is explained as an abbreviation of the "Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management", which just like COLISEUM, seems to be used in the field of Geospatial Intelligence, which analyses satellite imagery of the earth. In this way, PRISM is also mentioned in a number of documents on the Cryptome website. These are dating back to 2003, which is four years before the alledged start of the NSA PRISM internet program in 2007.

> More about this confusion: Is PRISM just a not-so-secret web tool?

The existence of what looks like a third PRISM system was unveiled by this PDF document at the Cryptome website. This document, dated March 21, 2004, describes PRISM (Protect, Respond, Inform, Secure, and Monitor) as a Homeland security Command and Control (C2) decision support system, providing a single end-user application for messaging, alerting, geo-referenced mapping, and asset tracking.

A program called PRISM is also used by the US Secret Service, where this is an acronym which stands for Protective Research Information System Management (PRISM-ID). This system is used to record information that required to assist the agency in meeting its protective mission that includes the protection of the President, and other top level officials. More about this program can be found in this PDF document from 2010 at the Cryptome website.



Links and Sources
- The Washington Post: U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program
- The Guardian: NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others
- Business Insider: Is The Claim That The Government Has A Direction Connection To Tech Companies A Lie?
- Forbes: Startup Palantir Denies Its 'Prism' Software Is The NSA's 'PRISM' Surveillance System
- New York Times: Tech Companies, Bristling, Concede to Federal Surveillance Program
- ABC News: 4 Unanswered Questions About NSA Leaks
- The 2011 Intelligence Community Classification and Control Markings Implementation Manual (PDF)
- The 2012 DoD Marking of Classified Information Manual (PDF)
- ZDNet: The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism
- The Week: Solving the mystery of PRISM