[eli]

IANAL, but I really don't think that EO (which is not a law) means that you can unilaterally declassify something which you think conceals a violation of law. Also, I'm not aware of anything Snowden disclosed that shows the NSA broke any laws. The FISA court signed off on this stuff, no?

[mpyne]

Right. The determinant as to whether information is classified is its effect on national security if widely known.

You don't classify innocuous material just because it might be embarrassing.

But on the other hand you can classify material that risks national security even if it also happens to be embarrassing.

In any event PRISM itself is 0.01% or so in actuality as it was claimed to be, I'm not even sure I'd call PRISM itself embarrassing (it's just a damn web service). The laws under which PRISM operate might be different, but that's not something we can pin on NSA, and it's not something that was secret anyways.

[fnordfnordfnord]

>You don't classify innocuous material just because it might be embarrassing.

You're wrong. That's a well-known, ongoing, and acknowledged problem in the US which even has its own act of Congress as an attempt to deal with the problem.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/111/hr553

Here, if you like a good Catch-22: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121126/01371621143/defen...

[mpyne]

I'm not saying no one has broken the law or regulation. I'm saying that's what the regulation describes as "national security information".

[fnordfnordfnord]

>The FISA court signed off on this stuff, no?

Who knows? The "court" meets in secret. Its rulings are secret. I'm not even certain that NSA is bound in any meaningful to abide by their decision/advice.