[monocasa]

> The plaintiffs in Clapper v Amnesty would have standing if the program worked as you described.

No, because the way the system works is that information makes it's way to the NSA on the presence of certain search terms and is prefiltered before it ends up in their hands. The ruling by the supreme court in the case of PRISM is that amnesty international can't prove that they were among the search terms ever searched for, so they can't prove that they standing. Only if there was a leak of the actual keys slated for collection (or if the NSA agreed to release that, which would never happen), then they could relitigate.

This is in contrast to the bulk call data, where, because the NSA was collecting from everyone who made calls, standing could be confirmed.

> How did one illegal program turn into multiple "illegal programs"?

I'm bundling it up with the other programs Snowden leaked.

[lern_too_spel]

> No, because the way the system works

That's not how the system works. The system allows collection of data to/from specific non-Americans outside the US. Amnesty International didn't know that it was for specific individuals at the time they filed their suit, but Snowden's leaks and later the DNI confirmed it.

> I'm bundling it up with the other programs Snowden leaked

Once again, only one of them (phone metadata collection) was illegal. The other programs he leaked, including PRISM, are so legal that nobody with any sense would attempt to challenge them.