Quote Originally Posted by Alexanderofmacedon
On this issue, I think I have a few problems with it, but overall, if they're only monitoring what they say they are, then I'd say "ok". I don't see an invasion of privacy too badly, so I think it's alright. I may change my mind, when I get more information.
That about matches my position.

Lemur, Im no intelligence expert- but the guy in the article sounds like a knuckle-head. Legal/ethical questions aside, it strikes me as the absolute best way to achieve the goals of the program. Say the NSA gets a cell number used by a terrorist recruiter in Afghanistan- obviously, they should tap the number asap, but in addition with this program they can instantly query their database and find out, not only what numbers have been called by this one, but they can also pull up any matches for calls into that number. From there, they could also instantaneously look for patterns in phone numbers that the people who were in communication with this number of calls in common between all of them. From this they could begin to get a picture of who other persons of interest may be.

For example, if you have people in 8 different states all calling a known terrorist number and then you have records of them all calling each other in addition to others- you'd have the potential to uncover networks of possible terrorists.