Comment The best part about this story is (Score 4, Insightful) 285
how completely clueless it is. Let's see
(1) The NSA doesn't wiretap the US. For all the hysteria, the NSA is only looking at calls crossing the border. Inside the US its FBI, and the Feebies are very jealous of that.
And it certainly doesn't wiretap the whole US, because there's so much ohone traffic and 0.999999 of it is uninteresting.
(2) Could the NSA hack -- could DoJ simply subpoena -- the contents of a hotmail account? You bet
(3) Now, with prepaid phone cards etc. If I'm getting this, you're saying NSA is bad because they can't get intel from something like a prepaid phone. Now think it through: Achmed al Boomaboom goes into WalMart, and buys condoms, a bag of Fritos, and a prepaid phone. He makes six "busines" calls, talking in code words, calls a hooker, and throws the phone away. How is the NSA supposed to figure out which phone it is, and capture the phone calls, before he pitches the phone.
More to the point, how can they intercept those phone calls without intercepting all calls, or at least all prepaid cell calls?