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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   25025 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026

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I think you are technically incorrect. Which wouldn't be a problem except that you were so pedantically annoying to the other poster.

Here is the text of FISA. It does not contain the word PRISM anywhere. PRISM is a code name for one of the tools that Section 702 authorized. (I believe your comments are blurring the distinction between being something and authorizing something.) The fact that PRISM is a code name and was classified justifies calling it a "black program". Also, I interpreted the phrase line item from OP to be budgetary, since I have only ever heard that term used in a budgetary context before.

In general I'm sympathetic to the idea that most pro-Snowden/anti-NSA folks don't actually know what they are for/against. But I don't think you ranting at them in only semi-correct formalisms is helpful.

PRISM is a code name for one of the tools that Section 702 authorized.

I think an equivalent way of saying this is, "Section 702 is the statutory authorization for tools like PRISM."

(I believe your comments are blurring the distinction between being something and authorizing something.) The fact that PRISM is a code name and was classified justifies calling it a "black program". Also, I interpreted the phrase line item from OP to be budgetary, since I have only ever heard that term used in a budgetary context before.

Perhaps blurring occurred. I would contend that the blurring occurred here:

As for the statutory authorizations, they were black programs and their replacements are almost certainly black. There's no statutory line item for PRISM or XKEYSCORE any more than there was for the SR-71, and there won't be for the replacements either.

Is this talking about "statutory authorizations"? Or is it talking about line items, which you interpret to be budgetary?

I contend that if it's talking about "statutory authorizations", we obviously have it. I will concede that if all that Nybbler was saying was that we don't have public budget lines, then sure, we don't have it. But I would also contend that that's pretty much entirely beside the point when the conversation is about what they have legal authority to do and what we know about what their programs actually did.

I also think that whether proper names are in the statutory text isn't particularly salient for whether we have a statutory authorization or are able to understand how something works. A couple of prompts to some AI on the topic, and it appears that the term "Head Start" was nowhere to be found in the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, but nevertheless, a program by the name "Head Start" was understood to be authorized by this statute. That does not imply that this program was so 'black' that we can't understand anything about how it works.

Look, I'm normally not this belligerent, but Nybbler in particular has a history of being willfully ignorant on this topic. Over and over again.

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