There have been a lot of news stories about NSA surveillance programs following the leaks of secret documents by Edward Snowden. But it seems the more we read, the less clear things are. We’ve put together a detailed snapshot of what’s known and what’s been reported where.

More: FAQ: What You Need to Know About the NSA’s Surveillance Programs - ProPublica

A few personal observations:

- Much, but not all, of what has been reported by Greenwald at the Guardian has turned out to be true. What Charles detected, and even elicited, from Greenwald early on was the “editorial” and “stylistic” spin Greenwald needlessly laddled all over the stories that, for a while, obscured these facts . I hate to dip into arm chair psychology here but I will; Greenwald has either a basic insecurity as to his intrinsic skills as a reporter or the innability to share a space with all the other reporters that are at least as good as he so he overplays the implications of the facts and thus his postion as a journalist in all of this.

- The collection of Metadata for (almost) all phone calls within the US is a fact. And that the idea that it is only Metadata so that it is anonymous and limits what can be deduced about you is clearly false.

- The widespread “archiving” of the content of (almost) all US Phone and Internet communications is not a fact. But, the archiving of the content of any US Phone Calls or Internet communications can be archived and accessed later without a warrant, assuming that it is not involving a US citizen, and discarded aftet that if it detirmined to be so.

- This is all legal, except for a few cases that have been detected and stopped. But it is also clear that this legality is based upon a legal framework first established in the Bush Administration and only updated early in the first term of the Obama Adminstration. It is obvious that there is not a complete consensus as to the legitamacy of this legal basis and that it will be tested. I think that it would be interesting to see where the basis of the legality of these laws and institutions comes from in regards to the Obama Administration.