After Edward Snowden leaked NSA slides in 2013, two names became synonymous with the agency’s vast online spying powers: Upstream and PRISM. Both also fall under a surveillance authority known as Section 702 , a provision of law that was enacted by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. In early 2017, the intelligence community rebranded these two kinds of surveillance, referring to them as “upstream” and “downstream.” The names may have changed, but the surveillance is the same. Upstream surveillance involves collecting communications as they travel over the Internet backbone, and downstream surveillance (formerly PRISM) involves collection of communications from companies like Google, Facebook, and Yahoo. - Upstream vs. PRISM