Reply #5: I think you have most

[spindrifter]

of it right. I would not agree that FISA was passed to protect the rights of U.S. citizens, however. I think that is a wash to make it salable to Congress.

"These things lead me to believe that the object of the order was not any individual communication, but, rather a dragnet of all communication looking for key words or names. Possibly to build a data store of those conversations that could be mined to obtain background once a target was identified, or new keywords could be searched as they are identified."

This, I believe is the real key to all of this. The value is that having the information that comes through the dragnet is the technique for retrospectively justifying renditions and other activities of the BFEE.