What Team Snowden neglected to mention at the time was that the PRGICT also analyzed Section 702 in its December report, while the PCLOB said in January it was going to address it at a later date.
When Snowden claimed in March that both panels found that the stopped “54 terrorist attacks” claim was “untrue,” in regards to the Section 702 program, PRGICT had already said the exact opposite:
“During the course of our analysis, NSA shared with the Review Group the details of 54 counterterrorism investigations since 2007 that resulted in the prevention of terrorist attacks in diverse nations and the United States. In all but one of these cases, information obtained under section 702 contributed in some degree to the success of the investigation. Although it is difficult to assess precisely how many of these investigations would have turned out differently without the information learned through section 702, we are persuaded that section 702 does in fact play an important role in the nation’s effort to prevent terrorist attacks across the globe.”
Now Snowden’s claim has even less merit, because last week the PCLOB weighed in on Section 702 and its relevance to the 54 prevented plots (while also noting that “other examples have been shared with the Board more recently”). The PCLOB not only agreed with the PRGICT, it also added new details…
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