[acqq]

...and the FISA Court makes the blanket orders allowing the security organizations to have billions of collections in the U.S, see the output of the program made by NSA:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-boundless-in...

It is all "legal" in a sense that there are court orders, but there are no real checks as the orders are blanket ones.

Moreover, to read your mail older than 180 days from any provider according to the current laws they don't need any order at all to do it legally:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/04/fourth-amendment-em...

[mortehu]

Are you sure you're not conflating various types of SIGINTs here? We're discussing PRISM specifically. The article you linked does not even mention PRISM.

[acqq]

Neither I nor you can be 100% sure what's going on (unless you are one of the guys "inside," heh) but I think it's good that now people start to care if the executive organizations are giving themselves unchecked powers.

Let's see if "it's legal" as said by those you quote simply means "we don't need to ask anybody for permission" and "every three months we get from our court the permission to do anything." The fact is that they use such arguments, let's see the extent of it. The recent news seem to suggest that it's bigger that it was known up to now.