For those of you claiming this is better because there is a warrant.

[On the Road]

141. I am Sure You Would Like to Know About it

but the government has been listening in on people's calls (as opposed to collecting phone logs) for over a century now. Few people seem to have a problem with it, largely because a warrant is required.

Information on local wiretaps is not routinely distrbuted, and few people know if they have been a subject of a warrant. Whether you have a constitutional right to information on wiretaps has not been decided by the courts:

...courts have not been clear about whether the public has a right to review warrants and related materials. Indeed, in a series of cases arising out of the same 1988 investigation, different federal appellate courts came to very different conclusions.

[small]http://www.rcfp.org/rcfp/orders/docs/SJWARRANTS.pdf[small]

It doesn't sound like the FISA warrants are being any more restrictive with information than either local law enforcement or other federal investigations of criminal investigations or terrorist groups.

On the other hand, if your phone call data is captured while making an international call to a location covered by a warrant, do you really want that distributed to the general public? Is that protecting privacy?