NOAA 6 satellite observations at 850 km over the auroral zones have been examned. We find that regions of auroral electron percipitation (0.3--20 keV) with energy fluxes sufficient to produce discrete aurora are generally spatially associated with significant changes in the intensity of 30- to 800-keV protons filling the atmosphere loss cone. The proton intensity changes often occur simultaneously with spatial changes in the intensity of energetic (>30 keV) electron precipitation at the high-latitude boundary of the electron population. The velocity-space distribution of the proton precipitation agrees with that observed for earthward streaming protons at the outer boundary of the plasma sheet and also with those calculated to result from current sheet energization. This agreement between the proton distributions implies that electron precipitation responsible for discrete aurora often occurs at the outer boundary of the plasma sheet in association with boundaries and other spatial structure in the streaming ion distributions. This furthermore implies that the upward directed, field-aligned currents associated with discrete aurora are also aften associated with the streaming ion structures. The comparisons with the distributions of ions ejected from the current sheet suggest that discrete aurora often occur on magnetic field lines which map along the outer boundary of the plasma sheet into the tail current sheet and that the cause of these discrete aurora is associated with current sheet processes.