There is so much misinformation on this whole thing that I had to set the record straight.
First off, you've all obviously gotten your information from trusted news sources, and I respect that. However, in this day and age, you really, truly need to check to make sure that you are getting the proper info, since the press seems to be in everyone's pocket but the people that matter (you and me).
IF the NSA was listening to phone calls without a valid warrant, as it is made to seem by the media (they call it WIRETAPPING, for goodness sake), then I would be standing up and screaming with the rest of them. That is wrong, that is unconstitutional, and it is an abridgement of my freedoms that i am not willing to sacrifice, even for a higher level of security. Something like that is not a case of IF it gets misused, but WHEN. Many of the articles in the Patriot Act have been misused already. It was only supposed to be used against terrorists, but they've used it for many domestic issues, too, including a guy selling baby food without a liscense. I kid you not.
HOWEVER, the media has spun this so that everybody thinks that this is what is happening, but it really is not. The NSA does NOT and can NOT listen to ANY phone without a warrant.
The media calls it WIRETAPPING to elicit a visceral, violent response from the people listening. After all, ratings make the world go around.
ALL THAT IS HAPPENING is they are farming information about what phone number called what phone number, feeding it into a computer and having analysts look at them, to see if they can find patterns. PERIOD. They know some of the numbers of the known terror cells "over there" and if you call that number a bunch of times, they use that information AS PROBABLE CAUSE TO THEN OBTAIN A WARRANT FROM A FEDERAL JUDGE to tap your line and listen to your phone calls.
So, as long as you are not calling a terror cell in Tehran on a regular basis, your phone calls are not being monitored. The NSA still needs probable cause to listen to your conversations.
Oh, and BTW, it just so happens that the records that the NSA is obtaining (phone call lists and nothing more) are more or less a matter of public record, not subject to any search or seizure laws, warrant requirements, or any provacy issues. In fact, your phone company regularly sells this VERY SAME INFORMATION to marketing agencies and credit card companies to see if they can track down patterns in your call history to then target their marketing efforts more specifically to the "tastes" that they can decipher using these records.
If the NSA even ever looks at your information under this program, all they are going to see is what you see on your phone bill. Number of origination. Number dialed. Duration of call. PERIOD. There is no "wiretapping". There is no listening to conversations. All there is is a big media hoopla over information I could look up on any one of you in 5 minutes over the internet as long a I had a valid credit card. Sorry to tell you this, but it is just not that big of a deal (unless you're calling Tehran regularly...)
