Democratic establishment unmasked: prime defenders of NSA bulk spying

[karynnj]

141. The subject of the thread was the Greenwald article

It is completely reasonable within a thread to discuss anything in the OP. Here, I commented on text considered important enough that it was included in the OP itself. Further, I said in my title line that I was not addressing anything to do with the NSA.

It is rather hard to say that what I wrote was a "strawman" - when I explicitly was NOT speaking of the NSA. I was very clearly pointing to what I thought was a dangerous comment - at best written without thinking of what it implied.

I did not comment on the NSA - thinking this was not a good thread in which to have a real discussion. Having nothing to do with what I commented on before, I will state what I think.

I actually do not think collecting telephone records violates the 4th amendment - as long as a court order is needed to access an individual's records. These are the same records the phone company has always kept -- and prosecutors have requested them likely since before you were likely born. I realize that most people here disagree with me, but - as the government has said - these are third party property and belong to the various phone companies.

In today's world where there is not one local company that will have the records, it would be very time consuming to request from all possible phone companies the outbound and inbound calls from people for whom there is a very valid reason to get this information. This could very valuable time lost.

I do not feel any more insecure because the government has that information than I did when it was just the phone company. ( I worked for Bell Labs until the late 1990s and understand how much information can be pulled out of this by data mining.) However, I think the issue to push is to increase the restrictions on access. In addition, the number of people working for NSA would have to be very greatly enhanced for the NSA to analyze patterns for everyone and then use the information against them. This is as paranoid as thinking that everyone is looking at you as you move through busy streets in places like NYC.