Bush's Shrinking Safety Zone

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

TS got it right with Echelon. Well played sir

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report

Only the NSA could operate such a wiretapping operation, technologically...

I guess the issue that comes out of call patterns is 'degrees of separation'. If you call your local store to order flowers and the owner of that store gave money to Hamas, does that make you eligible for a wiretap?

Added with data mining, it could get even more complicated. The system might have said that you were not a 'person of interest' until you bought or rented a copy of 'Munich', which put you over the threshold.

All of this might not even really matter except that they have now mixed in criminal with anti-terrorist. This means that if they use this extraordinary power and find that you have broken a mundane law like drug possession or tax evasion, they can use the information gathered without court approval against you in criminal court. It might even work out that you can be charged in criminal court and not be able to see the evidence against you since it was gathered in secret, although I'm pretty sure that this is clearly a Constitutional violation that the adminstration has not gotten around - yet.