(PolicyMic) The details about the NSA’s second frighteningly Big Brother-ish data-mining program have been sidelined by the talk of PRISM, but it’s worth paying a bit more attention to the NSA initiative that was first leaked to the public last week. BLARNEY, the NSA’s phone surveillance program, captures metadata from communication, while PRISM obtains the actual content of the correspondence. Thus, many might approve of the use of BLARNEY while condemning the tactics of PRISM.
We have seen a strategic and deliberate doublespeak in which defense of the NSA’s activity attempts to reassure the public by describing the limitations of BLARNEY, when that is an entirely separate system from PRISM. Thus, if one wished, they could defend the actions of PRISM by explaining the limitations of BLARNEY and failing to explain the two are very different programs. Understanding that the two are separate is crucial to making sense of the coming debate.
