WH on NSA snooping: You can totally trust us.

[Felch]

Should I take it that MrFun supports the Bush administration's efforts to invade our privacy?

[DinoDoc]

If they can't produce one, then I'd think that this probably shouldn't be done.

The Tsarnaev brothers say Hello.

[Joseph]

This started in 2006, and is legally rationalized by the PATRIOT Act. If you ever thought Obama would actually change anything, you're a ****ing ******.

EDIT: Sorry, that was an X-Post that came off as unreasonably harsh.

Obama voted against the Patriot Act as a Senator.

[Hauldren Collider]

Values over security. Make the hard decision Mr. President.

Save the last one, all excellent quotes. The last one sucks because it's a lame mashup of what Kennedy said and what Jefferson said.

[Evan Madrigal]

1984-------1984--------1984 da da da da du dah dah! All going according to plan.

[Thorn]

I dunno why everyone is so uproar'd about this, or even suprised, this kind of easedropping has been done since the 70s via the military by project ECHELONG and variants, subvariants, etc.....

Does it work well though, not really otherwise I'd have daily visits from the FBI, I am on "a" no fly list, and some sort of watch list, but for all the stupidist reasons.....

[pchang]

Echelon, at least, was only intercepting transmissions outside of the US. The courts ruled that even though many of those transmissions had an end point in the US, it was OK because they were collected in bulk and could not be filtered out before hand. The big surprise for me is that they got a Federal judge to sign off on such a flimsy rationale.

[pchang]

Metadata analysis is very good at establishing a social graph (the basis of Facebook and its multi-billion dollar market cap). Combining this data with what Google and Facebook know about us would be the stuff of the Stasi's wet dreams.

[regexcellent]

The vast majority of the useful intel collected by the NSA is about who's talking to whom, not what they're saying to each other, in spite of employing hundreds (thousands?) of linguists. Knowing what calls were placed where gets you most of the way there.

[self biased]

The vast majority of the useful intel collected by the NSA is about who's talking to whom, not what they're saying to each other, in spite of employing hundreds (thousands?) of linguists. Knowing what calls were placed where gets you most of the way there[citation needed].

.

[korn469]

I think right now it's mostly just a reactive tool. A threat is identified or an attack happens and they can use the data to piece together what happened. If it would stay like that, it might be ok. The potential for abuse is there, but it's probably not too bad. However, I think if nothing happens and it continues along, then it will get an upgrade in 3-8 years that will give it predictive power and it will be like a minority report 1984 thought police type program.

You take the phone program plus the software program and add in this:

http://defensesystems.com/articles/2011/11/17/darpa-anomaly-detection-at-multiple-scales.aspx

[MrFun]

[DinoDoc]

I have to give the NSA credit here for coming up with a name that assures everyone involved of the limited and entirely Constitutional nature of the program: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...0box:Position1

[kentonio]

What I don't get is...what the hell kind of judge signs a warrant like this? What the ****?

About a month ago I was arguing with Kentonio over whether we should distrust the government as a whole or if "checks and balances" is enough and having an independent judiciary/checks and balances makes the concept of limited government irrelevant. I am resting my case here and claiming victory.

The failure here is not the concept of government or even the checks and balances, the failure lies squarely with you and everyone else who didnt object and use your vote to fight against the Patriot Act and the other legislation that led to this point. You folks voted them in, and now they're governing you in the way you deserve.

[DinoDoc]

The failure here is not the concept of government or even the checks and balances, the failure lies ... the Patriot Act and the other legislation that led to this point.

I'm not sure you understand the concept of checks and balances.