General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The Latest Snowden Leak Is Devastating to NSA Defenders [View all]randome
(34,845 posts)No one ever said that the NSA's only job was to collect metadata. They are a spy agency. They spy on foreign countries and on foreign suspects.
A warrant is not needed if a foreign suspect is the target. If they have the authorization to collect a foreign suspect's communications, they will 99.9% of the time also collect communications to and from that suspect that have nothing to do with the NSA's task. And some of that data may belong to American citizens.
You can't know which emails to collect until you know which emails to collect. Does that not sound ridiculous?
And out of hundreds of billions of communications per year, the NSA's 'creepy' collection amounts to a few thousand communications. What is that, something like one hundred-thousandth of a percent?
I would call if snooping if they deliberately set out to spy on American citizens. But that's not what the article is alleging. And that's against the law.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]