Reply #10: Keeping track of phone connections is (can be) done automatically,

[rman]

detecting patterns in those connections is (can be) done automatically.

This is how they come up with 'chatter alerts'.

In so far that phone calls (and emails, faxes etc) are recorded, the contents can be analyzed automatically to a large extend. That includes making links to other info about the people that are being 'wire tapped', ie what books you borrow from the library, or what books your family members borrow from the library.

At some point humans will judge what the system comes up with - but the bulk of the work is not done (doesn't have to be done) by manual labor.
The technology is all there, it's just that to do this on a massive scale takes a lot of money - of which they have no short supply.



Of course such a system will come up with a lot of false positives. But the neocon gang in power prefers to be safe rather then sorry, and takes that paradigm to an extreme.
Per Ashcroft: "...waiting for the commission of a crime, or waiting for there to be evidence of the commission of a crime, didn't seem to us to be the appropriate way to protect the American people".
See "The Power of Nightmares" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm