I took off my Obama stickers yesterday

[JoePhilly]

197. Prove to me there are no Unicorns.

First, we already know that the government CAN listen to your calls. They have ALWAYS had that ability. So there is nothing really new on that point.

Now, at one time, the FBI was actually listening in without warrants. Which is why the FISA courts were created (Ted Kennedy introduced the legislation, and Carter signed it).

So, again today's question is not whether the government has the ability to listen in. They always have. And, laws have been passed in an attempt to prevent the government from listening in when they should not.

Now ... one can certainly decide that the current government is listening to all calls. I remember back in the 70s a guy in my neighborhood has painted a sign on his door which said the government was doing just that to him. That, and that they'd implanted a device in his head to control him.

If you already believe that the government is listening to your calls, there is nothing I can tell you to change that belief. After all, they have always had the ability to do it. And the reason the laws exist is specifically because of overreach. You create the laws to limit overreach.

Now, let's examine a detail about the FISA courts that I find interesting. Did you know last year there were only about 1700 requests to the FISA courts to allow investigators access to the data. That's it. ~1700. Doesn't that seem like a pretty small number to you? I mean, wouldn't a police state be diving into that data all the time ... not ~1700 times, but something like 1,700,000 times or even more?

But hey ... that number is probably a lie too. Its all a lie. The government is evil. We're all doomed.

As for the PTB (illuminati?) ... I'd suggest that the problem with that theory is that it assumes some unified group of the PTB all working together. And that's not happening. The people in the 1% would just as soon cut each other's throats. So even if tese PTB exist, they aren't one group, and they really aren't aligned.