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Let's recap

Disagreeable

Well-known member
First, we were told the U.S. government was spying on al Qaeda. That's a good thing. No one can complain about that. After all, it requires a FISA warrant. A warrant the FISA court has gladly given about 99.9% of the time.

Then, we learned that it wasn't al Qaeda, it was "international communications" in general: telephone conversations that began and ended at two foreign points. Using data mining, not just the calls of the suspected terror-connected were being intercepted, but the calls between individuals with no known connections with terrorism, in an effort to look for patterns and words ostensibly indicative of terrorism. And, because FISA law is too cumbersome to be followed when you are talking about intercepting tens of thousands of calls they didn't need a warrant. They were not spying on Americans, only foreigners. But, after all, this is necessary for the war against supporters of known terrorists, and it is a very limited program. This is not a big deal.

Later, we learned that it wasn't exactly just all phone calls between international sources, but calls beginning or ending in the United States, too. Though in direct conflict to previous assertions, this, we were told, was also just fine. After all the only people who had anything to fear were the terrorists. We would never conduct searches of the records of U.S. citizens that had nothing to do with terrorism: only the guilty were being spied on. It is a limited and quite sensitively conducted program. Don't be concerned, if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about.

Now, we've learned that it isn't about foreign vs. international calls at all. It's all calls. Your calls, my calls, the calls of politicians, of reporters, of government officials, everyone's calls, millions of them. Calls between Americans. They're all stored by a government agency that will try to find, same old line, potential ties between you and the terrorists. But don't worry, the president tells us, the government would never misuse the data files they've collected on tens of millions of Americans.

When will you get tired of being lied to?
 
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