It was changed pretty quickly, to be honest. PRISM was announced as a system that could "literally read your thoughts as you type". Greenwald said the NSA had

It was changed pretty quickly, to be honest. PRISM was announced as a system that could "literally read your thoughts as you type". Greenwald said the NSA had direct, unfettered access to Facebook, Google, etc. So naturally I was pretty concerned about this vast abuse of authority and massive blow against Constitutional freedoms, and expressed as much here on HN. But just reading the NSA slides made it clear that something much different (and far less sinister) was being talked about. They couldn't "read our thoughts" after all. At worst, the system allowed tech companies to automatically package up the data legally obtained through actual warrants or subpoenas, something previously routinely done manually. PRISM even still required the company's manual involvement for each and every single request. The reality was far different from what had been implied, and sometimes even actually stated. Greenwald himself had either lied, or been mislead by someone, and my money was on the latter. But it was Snowden's job to know how PRISM worked and get Greenwald to explain it right. When it turned out that the self-described "career intelligence operative" was... not, I quickly realized that things weren't as they seemed. And then all sorts of excuses started piling on: Oh, PRISM does require a warrant sometimes, but the Court that issues them gives secret rulings (oooh). Never mind that the Court in question was around since 1978, or that no other nation even bothers putting judicial oversight on foreign intelligence. Snowden said he'd have been fine with PRISM with Article III warrants, but when an Article III warrant was duly issued for his own arrest then all of a sudden all U.S. courts were corrupt. And on it goes. And it's turned out that way for almost literally every single leak since. Some claim would be made about the NSA, but then when pressed Snowden or Greenwald would have to admit that the topic being discussed was a capability, but there wasn't evidence of major misuse. Or they'd leave out important context. A lot of this stuff would have been damning in some way on its own, so I could never figure out why the shiftyness was required. When you're debating with the USG and the USG is more honest, that's sad in many ways.