The technical protection he refers to is 'filter at [the] ingestion points' - in other words, its a technical protection that prevents some data from reaching t

The technical protection he refers to is 'filter at [the] ingestion points' - in other words, its a technical protection that prevents some data from reaching the NSAs data centre in the first place. Once its in the NSA's data centre, your only protection is a (weak, changeable, unaccountable) policy one. So by technical protection he's talking about preventing the data from reaching the NSA in the first place - if you can achieve that, you're much better off. edit: here we're talking about indiscriminately hoovered data, rather than 'asked for nicely and specifically via court order' data.