"the ability of the government to go back to taps collected years earlier to look for material with which to influence potential witnesses in the present"

[Bill Stewart]

At 09:14 AM 1/19/2014, coderman wrote:
>(2) threats to the United States and its interests from terrorism;
         Terrorism was the previous justification for the bulk collection
         and for the 3-degrees-of-separation "rule", so no change.

>(3) threats to the United States and its interests from the
>development, possession, proliferation, or use of weapons of mass
>destruction;
         When Dubya Bush was trying to justify invading Iraq,
         he talked about WMDs as "nuculur bombs" and chemical and 
biological weapons.
         But when some angry young zealot tried to car-bomb Times Square using
         "explosives" he'd gotten from an FBI informant,
         they also charged him with making "weapons of mass destruction",
         the Boston Marathon bombers got charged with that,
         and I think even pipe bombs have been called WMDs recently.

         So WMDs might be any random young resident calling his 
brother or cousin,
         and the NSA still gets to Tap All The Phones.

>(4) cybersecurity threats;  [ED: WTF???]
         Hey, the guy might be using Skype to call his cousin instead 
of minutes.
         And people are constantly trying to hack the computers at 
military facilities,
         banks, and civilian government agencies, either with 
deliberate targeting
         or just because it's easier not to program your botnet to 
use whitelists,
         and maybe that defense contractor's supercomputer can mine 
Litecoins fast.

         So no, I don't see the situation improving soon, and
         certainly not before they repeal Moore's Law.