Reply #5: Crap! So, Bush is DATA-MINING information from a variety of sources

[liveoaktx]

which includes records (ala Patriot Act NSA letters that can look at your bank accounts, credit card records, etc) in order to do pattern-matching to find terrorists. This, by the simple fact that it includes all kinds of stuff, includes records of United States Citizens.

IF this is what it actually is (and it certainly looks that way to me), then the question becomes, can the Presidency do data-mining on American citizens (as opposed, say to wire-tapping, etc) without a warrant? It would be very difficult if not impossible, to cull out american citizen information, particularly if you're using it to do pattern-matching.

Look, I read a book a few months ago called "No place to hide" which went into detail about some of the databases being used to collect information on people in this country. Seisint, for example, is one of those databases and they are private entity databases that are collecting and collating and analyzing for all types of reasons information about YOU-without your permission.

Seems to me that this is either THE issue or at the very least needs to be understood because wiretapping is too simplistic when massive databases exist.