I just finished a discussion panel with ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero which was originally planned to examine his new (superb) http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Our-America-Liberties-Terror/dp/0061142565/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-9734417-9217551?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186243692&sr=8-1 - book - about the work his organization has done for years in battling the endless expansion of executive power and presidential lawbreaking. But the only issue anyone in the room really wanted to discuss -- including us -- was the outrage unfolding on Capitol Hill. And the anger was almost universally directed where it belongs: at Congressional Democrats, who increasingly bear more and more responsibility for the assaults on our constitutional liberties and unparalleled abuses of government power -- many (probably most) of which, it should always be emphasized, remain concealed rather than disclosed.

There have been a lot of news stories about NSA surveillance programs following the leaks of secret documents by Edward Snowden. But it seems the more we read, the less clear things are. We've put together a detailed snapshot of what's known and what's been reported where.

Watching a specific person like this is called “targeting” by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law which authorizes this type of individual surveillance. The NSA is allowed to record the conversations of non-Americans without a specific warrant for each person monitored, if at least one end of the conversation is outside of the U.S. It is also allowed to record the communications of Americans if they are outside the U.S. and the NSA first gets a warrant for each case. It’s not known exactly how many people the NSA is currently targeting, but according to a leaked report the NSA intercepted content from 37,664 telephone numbers and email addresses from October 2001 to January 2007. Of these, 8% were domestic: 2,612 U.S. phone numbers and 406 U.S. email addresses.

(Yes, probably most daily work is done via the Rules, currently (if not always before: as ProPublica notes in their useful compilation of factoids.) Etc. Etc.

Since this exact topic has arisen in other venues, with many exchanges, shall try to address our real?/imagined? clashing POVs. Lengthy, though:
But there's hope that we can cut-out much future rhetoric on this permanent topic, en fin?). (No time today to cut out some repetition/Style's a bitch-goddess.)

I've been pondering implications beyond the appearances of how this agency does/does not actually 'operate' today: but 'next', and attempting to see that in perspective of so much that is "irregularly-irregular", not only in the zeitgeist, but in our present inability to project--with any confidence--(and quite unlike the scenario of Potiphar Breen's statistical dilemma!) an idea of what some 'incipient chaos'? might provoke. This, from the angle of how political Power is usually exerted--and often precipitated by--'Emergencies' (genuine or manufactured.)

You are hand-waving away a seeming-tamed Tyrannosaurus (whose mien is that of a house-pet with a good vocabulary.) As he plays well with the other house-pets, with nary a quiver or clue about how tasty each of these would be, instinctively.. we are advised to accept this docile view that he's just a kinda Big-raccoon (or maybe ferret?--that's what he's kept around for) and, our Friend forever.

We are talking past each other; you are offering reassurance that, the System today is properly staffed, properly overseen and Properly Directed--via these quite sane-sounding rule sets. I'm saying that, like Rumpelstiltskin's magnificent … but obvious … ploy: you are nailing-down the Obvious in this forest-of-trees, barely addressing the huge implications, the n-capabilities of near-instant morphing and especially: the Realities of how people-with-great-Power Will act to preserve, enhance (or otherwise defend) their perquisites, cf. all history libraries: that reptile brain is only a few mm away-from the rational face for public iconography. (Not just in Murica, either: though.. well, you. know.)

You elide my concern and its basis: the mere fact-of-existence! of this unprecedented, perpetually expanding/perpetually refining System. And its potential usage, especially: should an 'Emergency' happen?/be declared. The combination of extreme scope (that's what unprecedented means) extreme secrecy (which is Not the same word as 'security', let alone all the BS-rhetorical obfuscations of Security-Theatre) abetted by all sorts of 'Classification neologisms' quite beyond Eyes Only, Top Secret of yore. It's designed to be impenetrable-to … (any 'outside Forces', let-alone Reasoned debate.)

Hence my brickbat about insufficient perspicuity or perhaps a tendency to dismiss-early a particular POV, because such imaginations are also the playground of so many nutters of paranoid kind. (To that serious conflation I can only reply that … enough paranoia? over the machinations of the neoconmen + Cheney (+ that now permanently-disgraced General) might not have compensated for the mediocre-mind of Shrub/himself: but I think it unarguable that the entire Planet would be immeasurably saner, less conflicted and with FAR-better chances of survival, as we speak: had more than a mere handful said STOP! This Race to a land-war in the most unstable, utterly religio-confounded place on the planet!

This 'System' cannot be examined at all IMO without peering well into the philosophical implications of such a Power- creating, altering, enforcing! 'Device'. I'd welcome your rebuttal to this angle of view; I'm more than curious about how easily you seem to have dismissed that angle and its mares-nest of sub-angles.
(However tmi to find out: I'm thinking that we may not be so far apart as it appears, so long as our [referents] are made clear enough.)

So it just may be worth it to see we are at least in same Chapter: when the Scale of matters is extended beyond the stated, official "utility" of this System -vs- variant-intentions about its employment: especially as strife is just one misplaced air-strike away--for all players in today's hair-trigger milieu--that trigger often operated by Religio-fanatics who recognize-not their own bestiality and whose minds are as closed as in any marlowes (many dreaming of 17 virgins as they slaughter. Dunno what marlowe ever dreamed-of??)

I see this entire System for what it means: a multiplier of Power: political, social, financial: all corruptible by humans. That is the theme of the classics as have become cliches, re the homogenization, next regimentation.. then subjugation of the majority of worker-bees by [whatever clique has won the last revolution or coup?] Metadata by the yottabyte (and perpetually expanding, refining, encompassing)--we know what you can do with metadata, whatever were? the originally intended rules and oversights. We need to see this Before … some event precipitates/or is claimed to precipitate: a change in the entire focus of the System aka a Re-Purposing.

Via its new Owner (and however that new one got there.. and, for how long?) In sum: the full potential of this System can/probably-will be invoked, for all obvious reasons of consolidating and next wielding all-the-new-Powers of a [perhaps sElected, again?] President/C-inC, junta (or 'temporary'-Regent?)
Hey, It Happens! even with fewer seeming-insoluble Issues than our current dis-USA's (never-mind "the Planet's prognosis?" where human egos dwell.)
We already see why This System bloody-well had Better-be! competently overseen! perpetually. … As-if..

What I see is: an Edifice, constructed for un-tellable $Bs (much of those details Secret/diffused elsewhere too) and expanding--as the techno does, thus with new capabilities, thus.. an illimitable-process … except via funding as the Real-limit. Why should one ƒeare such a creation? you. ask. implicitly. Metaphors are less wordy:
What I also see: is conceptually akin to the Doomsday Device (yes, in that rollicking send-up of modrin man's warfare-gene/repetitively in-charge.)
Strangelove's McGuffin was a bomb: physical destruction via radiation effects. This one is a bomb too; its fuze is: any next chaotic human circumstance.
This 'Thing' is malleable, extensible, perfectible: but it all comes down to how that explosive-Power is actually used (today, and in any next.)

This could be deemed, at worst--mere paranoid dystopian fantasy--were our current expectations: ~more of the same as recent past. Here we may diverge in assessing probabilities; we'll see. I deem that, like this System, unprecedented--the dis-USA's near-(or far-) future has never been as unfathomable as now (not even on Dec. 6th 1941; we'd broken the Japanese code quite earlier.)

[Abetting say, forces-toward -chaos? may be the subtler observation that, 'governance itself' may be in jeopardy: in our case, the 'President' IMO is in a situation like, 'TFFO' re cycles: Too Fast for Owner. (Any 'owner'.) Not just our dilemma: that worry is about 'governing of hundreds of millions'--now being faced by all the hugely-overpopulated places.. India, China, Russia at al.]

[If you remain comfortable with the Power-of-secret-things: withstanding all political processes, indefinitely (?) then this also is only a scary, also perpetual mere What-if? matter..]

But I'm not comfortable with either Secret-massive-Power(s) or with any supposition that our near-future shall bear much resemblance to our recent-past; all one need do to arrive here is: examine the roster of 100 Important Matters we (and most others) are either ignoring, 'misunderestimating' or Denying-existence-of, to test this hypothesis. Well? Is this the spot for: Wondermark??

If only rhetoric next addresses the ludicrous division of the National Spoils of our own peculiar strain of capitalism? What then? (Already the inflation rate of decent food quite surpasses those fanciful official, 'averaged' numbers.) I hear from pensioners, especially those trying to pay rent and eat too--that corporate supermarket fare is escalating similarly; could give some local #s but even-more tmi.

We'll have to agree to disagree as to the stability, predictability--and limits of legal-compliance--as we watch 'governability' go wherever it does. D'overai ni proverai and like that. You appear to trust not only today's performance of secret bureaucracies and their Boss(es), but also expect that tomorrow's crises won't alter where you've placed your faith. (This, while having a much better grasp of the present and future capabilities of this (System? Albatross?) than what, 95% of the population?!)

I see the success of bin-Laden, abetted by the Shogunate's ignorant decisions and all which has led to today's dysfunctionality, (such that neither shall there be any authentic redress of the division of profits nor, attention to most of the other 99 on that List of crucial matters unaddressed. We aren't Adults! here.)
While the 'NSA Albatross' might be adequately inspected, corralled, overseen just-now.. 'might be' (we aren't really sure of even that) I deem that its Potentialities, combined with the dysfunction of most-all US "governance" AND this power-magnifier of-an-individual, the President (and all he retains control-over) … is a confluence capable of creating an Inflection-point, one currently under-most-radars and: that is a Bad. Thing. It could be a Decisive thing, via only some next utterly-unpredictable event.

This is why I think that this unprecedented-System is an Albatross, should not have been constructed and, because it Works: adds unmeasurable (and accelerating-->) new-Powers to the Executive and n-Agencies. It is hard to imagine that any citizen-plebiscite could, alone--overturn/cancel/remove it ... already.
Were Martial Law ever declared--under whatever pretext--The Device (this entire system) could quickly be re-purposed: alacrity! is its raison d'etre. And from a national or planetary overview: all would learn (or experience) what it means: that so much personal data--however once sequestered--might be used. (And not just 'the personal data' … as that 'cyberwarfare'-pit-of-death gets its first real Test.)

Rest case. Make it Go Away. If you can.

[Wouldn't you just Hate It, to be forced to a conclusion that: your very-own species! shall never reach Adulthood? almost identically to the basic plot of Blade Runner? (but with a wry twist: We are the Replicants!. The issue is not 'pre-programmed-death-times' but maybe [I say: surely] worse: pre-programmed perpetual adolescence! ]
Think about the trade-off: does it really matter if you exit life at year-X? (always unknown, also subject to the Laws of Chance) -vs- realizing that you'll never experience what, say, Being an Authentic adult human! ... might have been like! :-/

At home, however--logistics of scanning everyone/all-the-time, being too expensive anyway--your argument prevails re encryption back-doors and {sigh} much of the ugly (J. Edgar?) Hoovering of jillions of 99.999% useless messages. BUT.. only ever: via, even redundant-Overseers reliably catching each other's oversights--is that even possible?: