I love how he says several times "we aren't listening to your phone calls". As if that suddenly makes everything better. Fuck me.
"if anybody in government wanted to go further than just that top-line data and wanted to, for example, listen to Jackie Calmes’s phone call, they’d have to go back to a federal judge and — and — and indicate why, in fact, they were doing further — further probing."
Great. So they can't listen to your phone call, unless they indicate why they want to listen to your phone call. I'm sure everyone involved in this program was cherry-picked to ensure that no one says "no" to any of these requests. Oh, and I'm sure all the logs (who asked who for permission, what the reasons were, which requests were granted or denied, etc.) are also conveniently "classified," which you should remember is different than "secret."
Don't conflate FISC warrants issued for criminal investigations. FISC is barely even a speedbump when it comes to this sort of surveillance.
What's deeply ironic about the outrage here is that FISC was created as an extra layer to safeguard privacy. FISC warrants give law enforcement officials permission to initiate an investigation, not to access information that would otherwise require an Article III warrant.
Wasn't there reports that warrantless wiretapping is widespread?
They may not be listening to everybody's "phone calls", but how about activists, dissidents, whistleblowers, etc phone calls? How about people active in grassroots campaigns, from OWS to ecology, etc? How about people that work at EFF? What about journalists that are preparing a government corruption story, etc?
Heck, they had files one mile long for people like ...John Lennon and MLK, back in the sixties/seventies.
Well, it does seem like most folks are primarily concerned that they will be listening to your phone calls. So maybe it doesn't make you feel better, but maybe it wasn't targeted at you.
(I know, as if that makes anything better!)
The Verizon FISC order addresses only metadata. The PRISM presentation indicates that among the data captured from the providers involved in PRISM is VOIP data, which, would seem to be call contents.
In real life terms, it's like posting an NSA agent in every house in America, who promises to keep his eyes closed. Of course, he can hear everything you're saying, but he promises not to tell anyone unless you say something elsewhere that would give them cause to.