After all, it‘s already been revealed that the NSA and others make use of what they call „parallel construction“ to „refind“ evidence that they found through means they don‘t want to be challenged in court. As we said, this is just a way of laundering illegally obtained evidence. If Schneier‘s suspicion is right, then the NSA was actually probably happy that PRISM info came out first, since it does have at least some claims to being legal under Section 702.

But, if he‘s correct, it would mean that the NSA has secretly backdoored its way into networks, sucking up pretty much everything — and then when it finds something useful, it will then use Section 702 under the FAA and the FISA Court to come up with some reasoning why that same info should be „collected“ via either PRISM or the upstream telco traps, and then it can do more with it.