The new charts show both the details of the Prism system and the authorization process. Snowden has not talked much about either of these. But he has, for example, inferred that any Analyst has free reign to browse the collected data. The charts say NO to that.
Now it is certainly possible, some would say likely, that the Analysts get rubber stamp approval to do their browsing. I suspect not. Others will disagree.
But the chart tells us that there is a review and approval process in place at NSA and, if you look closely, at the FBI. In the case of the FBI there is the notation: “Research and Validate no USPERs” which would mean, I assume, that the FBI needs to insure that No U.S. Persons are being looked at for the request in question.
Is the system honored? As Hamlet would remind us, that is the question.
FWIW.
Snowden outright stated that getting approval was banally easy - about 5% of all requests received any scrutiny at all.
He said this early on.
I am 100% certain the answer is NO. The Power at their fingertips is so tempting for any leftist.
Leftist are absolute control freaks -- the power of the NSA data at the fingertips of Obama's top true believers is too powerful to not use.
I would gather that early on in his first term a secret access point to the NSA data was put in place, just for use by his top political operatives.