"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"

[grarpamp]

> (2) threats to the United States and its interests from terrorism;

Not only is the action not well defined 'terrorism', nor is
the resultant 'threat' from it, nor is the source and sink
of that action. So not only is Muhammad flying his
private 747 from Arabia into the Empire State subject
to general warrants in bulk... so is Joe Midwest Farmer
marching on Congress pitchfork in hand or burning
his fields to stop up the just in time food flow in protest
of some subsidy issue.
Same loose interpretation could be applied to most of
those stanzas.
Weasel words and mission creep, a year from now and
everything will be the same, unless Joe and Corp do
in fact continue to get up and act up about it.


On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 7:00 PM, Bill Stewart <bill.stewart at pobox.com> wrote:
> 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.
>