science

President's Surveillance Program

President's Surveillance Program is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand President's Surveillance Program rather than just read about it. In short: The President's Surveillance Program (PSP) is a collection of secret intelligence activities authorized by the president of the United States George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks in 2001 as part of the war on terrorism.

Key takeaways

President's Surveillance Program belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect President's Surveillance Program to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of President's Surveillance Program from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The President's Surveillance Program (PSP) is a collection of secret intelligence activities authorized by the president of the United States George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks in 2001 as part of the war on terrorism. Information collected under this program was protected within a Sensitive Compartmented Information security compartment codenamed STELLARWIND. The last presidential authorization expired on February 1, 2007, but some of the collection activities were continued, first under the authority of the Protect America Act of 2007, passed in August of that year, and then under the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which was enacted in July 2008. One part of the program was the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which authorized warrantless wiretapping of international communications where one party to the communication was believed to be affiliated with al-Qaeda. The other activities have reportedly included data mining of e-mail messages and telephone call detail records in the NSA call database. In 2007 the attorney general publicly acknowledged the existence of other intelligence activities covered under the same presidential authorizations. The full extent of the President's Surveillance Program was revealed in June 2013, when The Guardian published a highly classified report of the inspector general of the National Security Agency (NSA), describing how the program was established and evolved from September 2001 until January 2007. The President's Surveillance Program activities were periodically reauthorized by the president, and were later transitioned to authority granted in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008. The act required the Inspectors General of all intelligence agencies involved in the program to "complete a comprehensive review" of the activities through January 17, 2007, and produce an unclassified report within one year after enactment. The report published on July 10, 2009, concluded that the president's program involved "unprecedented collection activities" that went far beyond the scope of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. The report raised questions over the legal underpinnings of the authorizations, a lack of oversight, excessive secrecy, and the effectiveness of the program. The report concluded that the program was built on a "factually flawed" legal analysis. Public disclosure of the Terrorist Surveillance Program in 2005 ignited the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. The other classified aspects of the program had also raised serious concerns within the Department of Justice over the program's legal status and its potential effect on future criminal prosecutions. This caused conflicts with the White House that resulted in a dramatic confrontation in 2004 at the hospital bedside of the ailing Attorney General, and nearly led to mass resignations of top Justice officials in protest when they were overruled. The report on the program was also released during a period of intense negotiations over proposed language in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. This would amend the National Security Act of 1947, increasing the requirements for briefing Congress on some classified intelligence programs like this one—President Barack Obama threatened to veto the bill over that issue.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with President's Surveillance Program

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what President's Surveillance Program claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to President's Surveillance Program before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about President's Surveillance Program ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of President's Surveillance Program

In research: President's Surveillance Program appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses President's Surveillance Program in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: President's Surveillance Program is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American secret government programs, Counterterrorism in the United States, George W. Bush administration controversies, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for President's Surveillance Program outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study President's Surveillance Program in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what President's Surveillance Program means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain President's Surveillance Program out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is President's Surveillance Program in simple terms?

Why does President's Surveillance Program matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study President's Surveillance Program?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on President's Surveillance Program.