It would be nice if these articles (especially in net-savvy Wired) included computability and physical access arguments defining the current limits of practical internet surveillance, scoping a bit the unbounded oh-my-god-they're-reading-everything. Distributed growth beats centralized (observer) growth, no matter how many cooperative agents (AT&T, etc). i.e. what's the current sampling ceiling?
Does anyone believe that they're really going to stop? How about that that it didn't start during the Clinton administration (if the capability existed)?
People in the know kept all of their phone calls to 2 minutes and 1 second, minimum.<p>I'm hoping that was a purely hypothetical example, or else the signal to noise ratio must have been absurd.
<i>Tice said the NSA analyzed metadata to determine which communication would be collected.</i><p>The analysis of metadata -- signals intelligence -- is NOT covered under the consitution. Likewise node analysis or lots of other forms of mathematical intelligence gathering.<p>If the NSA can string seven communications nodes together to hone in on an accurate communications channel for terrorists to their sponsors/members/operatives, then they are doing their job. This critical work should not be lumped in with everything else.<p>Now the actual recording of calls and <i>data</i> of communications, as opposed to <i>metadata</i> -- that's another animal entirely.<p>Instead of grandstanding (and I'm a liberarian, so it's really hard not to grandstand on this one), we should try to take the concept of foreign intelligence into the world of IM, SMS, E-mail, and all the other new forms of data which live all over the world (including on U.S. servers)<p>I'm not making apologies for NSA. I'm simply pointing out that they are charged with doing an important job. They might be screwing it up, but that doesn't make the job go away. The last thing we want is another 1970s where Congress so crippled the intelligence agencies based on previous bad behavior that we were mostly blind in terms on HUMINT up until 9-11. Politicians and media outlets have a tendency to try to make audiences as emotional as possible -- which is exactly not what we want to do with something as important as this.