[1] Both the Upstream programs and PRISM are part of the Special Source Operations (SSO) division, which is responsible for collection in cooperation with corporate partners.
According to one anonymous official speaking to a Wall Street Journal reporter, first, a pre-selection is done by the telecommunication providers themselves, who select traffic (including the text of emails and the audio of telephone calls) that most likely contains foreign communications.
[4] An actual example of a facility where NSA taps Internet backbone cables is Room 641A in the San Francisco switching station of AT&T, which was revealed in 2006.
[1] On March 10, 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the United States Department of Justice and the National Security Agency (NSA) against the NSA massive online surveillance, claiming that "the surveillance exceeds the scope of the authority that Congress provided in the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (“FAA”) and violates the First and Fourth Amendments."
The lawsuit was not heard, like other previous analogue complaints, and the first debate was postponed to October due to lack of standing.