So is anyone else conflicted about the whole Snowden affair?

[Savannahmann]

66. Several points

First, I don't care about Snowden. He could be anything that anyone says he is, and the important point is this, are they monitoring/spying upon us? The answer is yes.

First the fallacy. That nobody is looking at the information without a warrant. That is asinine. If that was the case, the NSA could handle it in house with no more than half a dozen people who sit and play solitaire and link paperclips going for the office record of the longest paper clip chain waiting for a warrant to sort the data for information on suspect A. Booz Allen wouldn't have known about the program, much less have access to the briefing documents, or the data if that was the case. So the first lie is that nobody is doing anything with the data. Obviously that is false, because the NSA needs an even bigger facility to help them sort, store, and manage the data.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/

Number 2. Phone metadata without the PRISM information is as useless as a screen door on a submarine. Let's say that we know that suspect A talked to bad guy B. Then what happened? Did Suspect A get on the net and access a website with instructions on how to turn a pressure cooker into a bomb? Without that second half, you can't tell if Suspect A is really a person of interest, or a moron who dialed the wrong number, or his pet, or child, or whatever dialed the number by mistake. So you need his computer browsing history, and phone browsing history, too. That is just to get enough information for a regular warrant to put the suspect under normal feds in a van surveillance.

You see how quickly the claims fall apart? If they aren't doing anything with the information, then why do they need so many people to manage it that they had to hire a company to provide additional people to help with it? If it is just stored and held there accessed until a warrant is issued, then why is it such a huge secret that nobody is allowed to know about it? IF that was the case, I could almost see it is a secret situation, but Top Secret Secure Compartmentalization? That's a little extreme for a routine, and if you have had continuous warrants since the bloody thing went online it is absolutely routine, gathering of information.

Listen to the answers that the Government gives, and then ask yourself if they are reasonable. Because once you question authority, you might not ever learn the truth, but you'll be less likely to believe the lies. I don't know how bad this Cell Phone Metadata/ Prism stuff is, but I know it's not nearly as innocuous and no big deal as they claim it is. Because their claims, don't make any sense when you think about them for a minute straight.