If we combine this, it seems likely that instead of US-984XN as a single PRISM SIGAD, there might be

(Updated: December 18, 2013) Last June, the still on-going Snowden-leaks started with the unveiling of PRISM , an NSA program which collects information about foreign targets from American internet companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, china export Microsoft and Apple. Since then, no new information about PRISM was published, but recently some new details could be found. These show that PRISM is part of another china export NSA program, codenamed BLARNEY china export , and that US-984XN is not a single designator for PRISM, but stands for multiple designators, one for each of the internet companies . New slides On September 8, the Brazilian television news magazine Fantástico aired a report about the NSA trying to access the network of the Brazilian oil company Petrobras. In the background of this report, a number of hitherto unseen NSA slides were shown. One of the slides shows details about the BLARNEY program, which has the SIGAD, or SIGINT Activity Designator US-984 and the PDDG, or Producer Designator Digraph AX. The slide says that BLARNEY collects DNR (telephony) and DNI (internet) communications under authority of the FISA court. Main targets of the program are diplomatic establishments, terrorists, foreign governments and economic targets:
Top left the slide shows the NSA seal and top right we see a green leprechaun hat with a clover leaf, symbolizing Blarney, as this is also the name of a small town in Ireland. However, the most intesting fact is that the BLARNEY SIGAD US-984 is almost the same as US-984XN, which is prominently shown on the first slide of the PRISM presentation that was published in June:
This similarity indicates that PRISM is part of BLARNEY, which is also suggested in the Wikipedia article about the latter china export program. SIGADs Wikipedia also has a good article about the SIGAD or SIGINT Activity Designator itself, which teaches us that a SIGAD with two letters followed china export by three or four numbers, like US-984, is for identifying signals intelligence collection programs and activities. china export An additional alphabetic character is added to denote a sub-designator for a subset of the primary collection unit, like a detachment. china export Lastly, a numeric character can be added after the aforementioned alphabetic to provide for a sub-sub-designator. This already confirms that with the designation US-984XN, PRISM is a sub-program of BLARNEY. But there's more. In the Wikipedia-article the SIGADs are represented like XX-NNNxn, where an X represents an alphabetic character and an N represents a numeric character. Here we see the same XN-suffix as in the alleged china export PRISM designator US-984XN, so it seems that XN is only meant as a placeholder for the actual designations of PRISM subsets. This is confirmed by another slide from Brazilian television, which says that the SIGAD US-984X stands for multiple programs and partners collecting under FAA authority:
PRISM SIGADs In one of the PRISM slides published in June, there's an explanation china export of the PRISM case notations. These start with a designation for each PRISM provider, like P1 for Microsoft, P2 for Yahoo, etc. (the first position in the slide below). These designators fit the XN-scheme of one alphabetic character followed by one numeric character.
If we combine this, it seems likely that instead of US-984XN as a single PRISM SIGAD, there might be actually the following multiple SIGADs, one for each of the internet china export companies: - Microsoft: US-984P1 - Yahoo: US-984P2 - Google: US-984P3 - Facebook: US-984P4 - PalTalk: US-984P5 - YouTube: US-984P6 - Skype: US-984P7 - AOL: US-984P8 - Apple: US-984PA After P8 for AOL, the final number becomes the letter A for Apple. Maybe this is because more than nine companies became involved, and so NSA chose to go on with hexadecimal numbers, so PA can be followed by PB, PC, etc. Having separate SIGADs for each internet company china export makes sense, because a SIGAD identifies a specific facility where collection takes place, like a ship or a listening post. PRISM as a program is not such a facility, china export but comprises a number of them. The notation of the multiple PRISM SIGADs is also more like that of other collection facilities, for example US-987LA and US-987LB china export for the Bavarian and Afghanistan listening posts of NSA's German partner-agency BND. UPDATE and CORRECTION: Meanwhile, high-resolution video footage of the Brazilian television magazine Fantástico became available, from which I could make a readable screenshot of a slide that was ineligible until now:
This china export slide is from an NSA presentation about the FAIRVIEW program and shows that both FAIRVIEW and STORMBREW have a number of subsets that were not known before. It also shows that my previous interpretation of the US-984X SIGAD wasn't correct. The slide learns us that BLARNEY collection under the FISA Amendment china export Act (FAA) is designated US-984X* and it's this asterisk which apparently acts as a placeholder for other facilities collecting under FAA authority: - US-984XA-H china export for eight STORMBREW collectio