What a well made, awful little article. "But hey, for all you critics, there's always the Carter method." This is intended to be funny, but it's also intended to be belittling. Framing not wanting to be spied on as being a "critic" is reasonably toxic.<p>"The NSA can keep phone records made from another country for up to a month." As far as details to share, like. This has to be intentionally weak. Other details they could share: the NSA scoops up your emails and your phone records.<p>I don't know what the mechanisms are (e.g. I'm not positing lizard men are doing this), but way in which so much reporting aims to delegitimize any opposition to total surveillance is fascinating. What causes this?
The usefulness of the mail system for anonymous/pseudonymous communication is really underrated. It's pretty easy to mail a reasonably tamper-evident, encrypted letter anonymously in a way that doesn't raise any red flags and is unlikely to result in the ciphertext being noticed and stored forever. This is more than can be said for PGP-encrypted email.
I am sorry for Mr. Carter, but the NSA is also reading everyone else's email. He is not special in this regard (although I am sure his correspondance is significantly more interesting than mine).
Is probably the only method you could use to get people at the NSA to read correspondence from Jimmy Carter anyway. Hell, it may even do them some good, they might quit the day job and go take up disease eradication, or something.
Interesting Jimmy Carter international diplomacy fact: During the lead-up to the 1991 Operation Desert Storm, Carter wrote to many foreign leaders and members of the UN Security Council opposing U.S. action and urging those who received his letters to oppose White House policy in favor of his diplomatic strategy.<p>He later did the same thing to Clinton, though not nearly so bad.<p><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/2002/05/jimmy_carter.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/2...</a>