I’m a little obsessed with the story that broke yesterday about PRISM, the NSA/FBI project to gather information from popular Internet services, including Facebook, Google, and Apple.
So, naturally, I’ve been doing a lot of digging about the story on *.gov websites. In the process, I realized that the U.S. government loves the “PRISM” acronym. There are literally dozens of projects and applications named PRISM at the state and federal level, many with delightfully goofy logos. Here are some of my favorites.
Panelist and Reviewer Information System
Database of prospective reviewers for The National Endowment for the Humanities
Parallel Research on Invariant Subspace Methods
Argonne National Laboratory project to develop infrastructure and algorithms for the parallel solution of eigenvalue problems
Pliocene Research, Interpretation and Synoptic Mapping
USGS project to understand global climate change
Apply for grants from the Washington State’s Recreation and Conservation Office
Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model
Climate analysis tool from the National Water and Climate Center
Pesticide Registration Information SysteM
The Environmental Protection Agency’s database on all registered pesticide products.
Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer
NASA JPL’s airborne instrument for monitoring the ocean from UAVs
Performance and Registration Information Systems Management
U.S. Dept. of Transportation program to register commercial vehicles
Performance Reporting Information System
The State of Oregon’s workforce reporting system
Partnerships for Regional Invasive Species Management
The State of New York’s environmental effort to manage invasive species
Patient Reporting Investigation Surveillance Manager
Communicable disease data system for the State of Wyoming’s STD program
Performance Related Information for Staff and Managers
Dept. of Mental Health’s reports on hospital trends
Proactive Recruitment in Introductory Science and Mathematics
National Science Foundation’s effort to fund STEM programs for undergrad students
Proteomics Research Information System and Management
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s system for managing large-scale protein data
Procurement Information System for Management
Procurement software used across the federal government
http://www.nextrials.com/products/prism
NARUS seems to be hinting that it might be a prism we’re looking for. Twitter pic worth a thousand words!
https://twitter.com/tomsly/status/343041142650191872
No no no, you’ve got it wrong. It’s not the case that none of these are the PRISMs you’re looking for.
‘Invasive species’ is a disturbing code phrase.
‘Invariant subspace methods’: how they talk to their galactic overlords.
The ‘large scale protein data’ thing… Soylent Green is people.
They are _all_ the PRISMs you’re looking for. It’s just that the one you’re looking for is merely the tip of an enormous, far-reaching, all-encompassing alien infiltration.
P.S. they monitor the oceans because dolphins can’t be trusted.
The Power Reactor Innovative Small Module is a nuclear fast reactor designed by GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy. It is based on an old US Government experimental reactor called the Integral Fast Reactor. The design has not been adopted anywhere yet but has been proposed to reduce the size of the UK’s huge civil plutonium stockpile by burning as fuel.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-PRISM
The Power Reactor Innovative Small Module is a nuclear fast reactor designed by GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy. It is based on an old US Government experimental reactor called the Integral Fast Reactor. The design has not been adopted anywhere yet but has been proposed to reduce the size of the UK’s huge civil plutonium stockpile by burning as fuel.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-PRISM