Comment Why these programs were built (Score 1) 572
Ostensibly, the NSA's recording and then subsequent unpacking of all communications is to help prevent terrorist attacks. If they never reveal how these helped, truthfully not helping any investigation, or just to avoid showing their hand to suspected terrorists in a courtroom - the same paradox arises: The "terrorists" are part of the population that demands freedom from tracking. In other word, they are hiding among the populace.
The question we may all want to face is if a terrorist bomb takes out a bus with our family on it, would any amount of NSA tracking be acceptable? If the attack was instead thwarted via a program that was never, ever revealed (officers just magically knew about a plot), we'd be exactly in the current situation. So I find it difficult to accept that I know the truth about this situation still.
I don't trust the NSA - not so much about the snooping on general citizens, but that their program won't be used to find critical journalists, political opponents, budgetary critics, and perform a scientology-style smearing of their character. If they detect a bunch of would-be terrorists via web usage, TOR hacks, phone snooping, I would have to just go along with it: so far, no representative or candidate of my district is ready to stop any of these programs, although I've writen them about how we can put checks and balances into the programs.
If theoretically the NSA could know about *everything, everywhere* - would this be beyond some personal limit? What is the limit of what a police program should track about the citizenry?