5 things to note about NSA surveillance programs

Published June 9, 2013 11:41pm ET



WASHINGTON (AP) — Edward Snowden identified himself Sunday as a principal source behind revelations about the National Security Agency’s sweeping phone and Internet surveillance programs. Five things to know about the disclosures:

— THE PROGRAMS: The NSA has been collecting the phone records of hundreds of millions of Americans each day, creating a database through which it can learn whether terror suspects have been in contact with people in the U.S. While the NSA program does not listen to actual conversations, the revelation of the program reopened the post-Sept. 11 debate about privacy concerns versus heightened measures to protect against terrorist attacks. Separately, an Internet scouring program, code-named PRISM, allows the NSA and FBI to tap directly into nine U.S. Internet companies to gather all Internet usage — audio, video, photographs, emails and searches. The effort is designed to detect suspicious behavior that begins overseas.

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