[tptacek]

I think you may have accidentally moved the goalposts here. The claim wasn't that PRISM was restricted to warrants; it handles what are in effect court orders (more specifically, FISA collection directives) which are not warrants.

When stories about PRISM first leaked, there was intense speculation that it was a system that gave the NSA direct access to servers.

[sitkack]

What I don't understand, is that if the NSA is tapping all the routers why do they need PRISM at all? Or is the haystack so large they tap the whole thing AND collect from the providers.