Reply #5: What I'm getting at is this: Eschalon has been around for some years

[liveoaktx]

and, while it might not be at the top of most people's radar, it doesn't appear that anything has stopped it. IF it has been, because of the very nature of indiscriminate transmission it picks up, it's been collecting information on US citizens, it can hardly have been known widely to citizens.

Assuming that's it's already been doing this TO American citizens without explicit warrants, one would assume that 1. Congress knows about it and has approved or 2. Congress doesn't understand it or 3. Congress winks about it.

It would, though, if it were Eschalon, shift the debate to aggregation of data in general, since it's much more difficult when you are doing data-mining to exclude Americans.