People make too much of the name. If you were involved with a top-secret government surveillance project, would you ever mention the name outside of the NSA, even to companies you're partnering with? It's likely that until now nobody outside of the NSA had ever heard of "PRISM", which is why you get these blanket denials from the tech companies supposedly involved. To them, it's "The government is coming to us with requests for data on our users", not "Help work with us on this top-secret project named PRISM".
Projects often have multiple designators. US-984XN is the official name. Internally the collection platform (source) is referred to as PRISM (as an example, the entire U-2 program was CHESS). Each relationship with a partner probably had a code name like LONG WINTER (completely made up).
!!! WHO THE F%!# told you about LONG WINTER!?!? What do you know? Tell us now... we know you're lying dsl! Tell us everything and we'll let you live! Lie to me one more time and I'm drilling a hole through your hand with this electric drill! Who are you working with? Who's paying you? When did you convert to radical Islam? Who's your contact? Tell us now!
Who gets to choose the names? How do they prevent duplicates? Is there some approval process for names? I find this particular topic really interesting, specifically who and how a name for any top secret program is selected.
The selection process I don't believe to be public, and varies between organization. However everybody at least reserves them in a DoD database called The Code Word Nickname and Exercise Term System. Regardless of the project, code words become classified once they are exposed or no longer in use, and can be reused after two years.
Exactly right. Not to mention code names are things like OCELOT ELECTRON not actually mnemonic phrases. One of the conditions of a top secret clearance is that even after your clearance expires you cannot reveal the name of anything.
I always expect that intelligence agency types resonant with the whole 'true names' meme in fantasy literature for that reason.
