We seem so surprised that our privacy can be compromised.

[MineralMan]

47. I went and read that blog when I first saw the link.

It's no wonder a lot of people are writing about this topic. It's big news to most people, for sure. The information, however, about these capabilities has been around for a long time. Someone leaked a classified court order, which put this on the front page. There have, no doubt, been many such classified court orders in the past, and will be many more in the future, I'm sure.

People who have followed all of this for years were not surprised in any way that it is going on. It's been going on for some good while. I remember the TIA discussions clearly, and had been following the government's use of data access and mining since the late 1960s. It's been a slow, steady process of being able to access more and more data. That capability has been used throughout that time, as the capability developed.

The leaked court order just moved it to the front page, where people who hadn't known about this were suddenly presented with something that had been going on for a long time.

Anyone who's been watching already knew, instinctively that what is possible to do is almost always done. FISA itself is all about doing it.