> FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with the ord

> FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with the orders said. There were 1,856 such requests last year, an increase of 6 percent from the year before. From the NYT story seems that PRISM is more b) than a). However, I suppose the remaining questions are: 1) To what extent did these automated processes for reducing the burden of handling FISA requests enable the total quantity of data requested through FISA requests to increase? "Quantity has a quality all its own." 2) How extensive are these broad-sweep FISA requests now, and to what extent do they falsify the impression that FISAs are "lawful, specific orders about individuals" (Google), "orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers" (Microsoft)? In other words, that each individual FISA request covers only one person or a handful of people, so for example the number of people intruded on by FISAs last year is some reasonably small multiple of 1,856? 3) To what extent could the compartmentalisation of FISA information to a few employees, combined with the streamlining process and broad FISA requests, mean that the CEOs have less awareness than they thought about just how broad the FISA net really casts by now? Or instead are they happy not to know, or happy to be able to pretend not to know? In other words, is PRISM b) in principle but something closer to a) in practise, and if so who knew?