> The NSA itself stated in the documents quoted in the Washington Post story you yourself link that PRISM was its number one source of reporting (“The subtitle of this slide deck called PRISM the source “used most in NSA reporting.”).

It turns out that data collected in targeted wiretaps of some non-US citizens living outside the US who are believed to have foreign intelligence value is useful for intelligence reports. Who'd've thunk?

> In a single year 702 was used to collect 250 million American communications (https://www.brennancenter.org/media/140/download).

That's not what that document says. It says 250 million communications total were collected (across all programs that use Section 702, not just the wiretaps that feed into PRISM). Section 702 allows collection of foreigners' data if they have foreign intelligence value, not Americans'. From the document: "However, a declassified 2011 opinion of the FISA Court notes that 250 million internet
communications were acquired the previous year under Section 702."

> But 702 goes hops out from the original target to people they talk to and the people those people talk to.

Not only does this misinterpretation of the phone metadata collection program have nothing to do with PRISM, but it's false as well. The government is not allowed to wiretap Americans even a single hop away from a foreigner with national security value without a warrant.

> “Incidental” collection on Americans is expressly allowed. The FBI routinely uses 702 collection to build cases against Americans. It is a staggering program.

This doesn't mean that Americans' communications are collected, as Snowden ignorantly claimed. This means that if a foreigner with foreign intelligence value who is being wiretapped under 702 authorization talks about an American who is helping them, that can be used to build a case against the American.

>> Snowden thought it allowed the NSA to read anybody’s email

> - source please.

I gave it to you in my previous comment. He told Gellman as much.

> causing Snowden to panic and bring in the undereducated Greenwald

> First of all, the “undereducated” part is a strange assertion because it’s well established that Greenwald went to NYU law and worked for the prestigious white shoe firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz afterward. He had also at that point been writing (for the Guardian, Salon) specifically about NSA surveillance for many years. By what measure is an NYU trained lawyer with years of experience as a legal and surveillance journalist “undereducated?”

By the measure that he knows absolutely nothing about computers and was widely derided on Twitter by people who know better but instead of educating himself, he doubled down on his claims. Later, the New York Times, CNET, and others reported on these programs accurately, even interviewing people who worked at the tech companies on how the data was sent, and Greenwald continued to not understand it.

> But also, the Washington Post has itself reported that Gellman’s contact with Snowden began in May 2013 - Greenwald has said his started in February. So the timeline does not add up here. Even in the piece you link he acknowledges working with another journalist Snowden worked with (Poitras) at the time he was trying to persuade his editor to publish the first story.

Poitras isn't Greenwald. Gellman and Snowden have both said that Snowden contacted Greenwald after being frustrated with Gellman's fact-checking pace.

>> he shared information with the Chinese governmen

> This is false and defamatory (and invites a lawsuit, although you’re picking on someone who faces shall we say challenges defending himself this way). Snowden has repeatedly denied this (plainly baseless) assertion (eg https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/10/snowde...) and the article you link shows just the opposite - that he provided information openly to journalists (SCMP was famously independent at the time and routinely on the bad side of mainland government though that sadly changed years later).

SCMP is in China and therefore its data is China's data. To say otherwise is to be as naïve as Snowden.