Mothership_Greg: I would like to see some proof of this:

The names linked to the phone numbers are not available to the government before a court grants a warrant on proof of probable cause, just as the Fourth Amendment requires. Indeed, once that warrant is granted to examine content, the content can be used only for national security issues, not even ordinary police work.

_{6 hours ago}

Astonishing

In that article McCarthy goes off the deep end, asserting that, if 4th Amendment jurisprudence had evolved correctly, "it would not be a violation to wiretap a person’s conversations by physically attaching a monitoring device to the phone company’s line on a public street, without any entry into the person’s home or trespass on his property."

Wow!

Without delving into philosophic arguments about whether one's "person" under the 4th Amendment includes more than mere flesh and bone, it's enough to note that McCarthy's obliviousness to the 1st Amendment implications of his interpretation of the 4th Amendment indicates he makes a fearsome prosecutor, but not a fine legal scholar. · _{in 0 minutes}

Dr Steve

Exactly what I have been saying: this was more than mere lip service to the law. We took the mission seriously. Respect for the US Constitution was palpable. NOT breaking the law, and NOT breaking faith with the American people brought the pure satisfaction of professionalism. ..

genferei

True enough. But then we probably still think the police would only ask for that information in the process of conducting an actual investigation, not that they would be proactively stockpiling everyone's data on the off chance that something might be relevant in the future.

Because stockpiled data is subject to abuse.

Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator's computer.

...

Bad stuff happens. Where is the evidence that the program is GOOD for something? · _{1 minute ago}

genferei

I think you are confusing "private" with "a secret known only to me".

Perhaps we need a new word. How would you describe your salary, a woman's age, and my weight? All these things are known to lots of people beyond the person interested, and yet they are not information you would want - or would expect - to be disclosed to everyone in every situation. · _{10 minutes ago}

Fricosis Guy: Credit card purchases are certainly expected to be private transactions. You're using a third-party -- with whom you have a contract -- to faciliate the payment. Why must my purchases be public knowledge, because there's federal regulation of banking?

And I don't know about you, but my FB posts are only to my "Friends" -- whom I can unfriend -- and my tweets are to only my followers -- whom I can block. If someone takes that post and shares or retweets then that makes it public, but that's the same risk I take with snail mail or email.

What of my business doesn't the State have the right to collect and monitor? · _{7 minutes ago}

Fricosis Guy: Frankly, no, because that's not all the info from the phone company (there's geolocation "where" data as well).

But what about the other firms -- FB, Twitter, Google, credit cards -- and how that data correlates with your phone records (and each other)?  The data they have is perfect for signal or traffic analysis, not wiretapping or mail intercepts.

I may have agreed to give it to one company. I did not agree to give it to the government so they can pull it all together. There is little incremental privacy lost by reading my emails/listening to my phone calls if you know where I've been, to whom I've been talking (and when), what I've tweeted/retweeted, who I follow, and to whom, what my last three card purchases were, etc.   · _{6 hours ago}

Edited 5 hours ago

Dr Steve

Even while defending the program, I can understand the objections some have to the possible traffic analysis of their info. But under most of the circumstances I can think of, TA requires the warrant, too. · _{5 hours ago}

Fricosis Guy: Aggregate (verb):

1 :to collect or gather into a mass or whole

All the reassurances of PRISM advocates are undermined when they draw these distinctions without a difference.  · _{4 minutes ago}

Hartmann von Aue

 I am extrapolating on the demonstrated abuses of government information gathering.  Like Mona Charen on her podcast a few weeks back, thanks to the Obama administration, I can no longer trust that any audit, any investigation of my financial records or charitable contributions is not driven by political animus instead of an error in Line 47 b of Form 1040. We already had the DHS attempt to classify whole swaths of the conservative-leaning public as terrorists back in 2009-2010. You may be gullible enough to think that abuses like this won't occur, but I am not.  · _{13 minutes ago}