neil_s_anderson

Why would an analyst at the NSA be looking at your communications data?

It's a bit like the police getting a search warrant to look around your home. If there's no legitimate reason to do it, like having reasonable suspicion of a crime that requires investigation, then they're not going to.

You don't agree with monitoring the communications of adversaries at all, or you don't agree with doing the equivalent for communications made in the recent past?

Just because your communications data or metadata exists in some bulk dataset somewhere doesn't mean that it's being actively and personally investigated by anyone.

As with the issuance of a warrant for wiretapping, there would need to be a proportionate and legitmate reason for your communications within a such a dataset to be looked at.

The point of bulk data collection is to be able to, in effect, take a wiretap in the past before you knew what you'd need to be wiretapping in the present, by querying the bulk datasets for communications between specific endpoints within specific points in time.

As time travel doesn't exist, this is the next best technology available.

I find it odd how many people automatically assume that whatever the NSA is up to must be undesirable and therefore should be opposed.

I mean, where do you think analysis of plans by terrorists and nation state adversaries to attack our nation and its allies comes from? The raw intelligence data these are based on can only be gathered by surveillance of communications, both targeted and in bulk.

You should all be supporting this, as you benefit from it every day.