[ndt]

"Is that a better description...or are you looking for something else from me...??"

Nope, that was fine, I was just wondering if there was a new word to try to add to my resume :)

There have been changes that do affect a classic type warrant which required descriptions of specific places and things to be searched. As you pointed out for example, historically, one could reasonably expect that a target would use the same land-line phone, that is just not the case with things like disposable cell phones. With the addition of the roving warrant, that should not be an issue anymore.

The only thing that I can think of from a technology perspective that would not be doable with a fisa warrant is exactly what Hayden says they are not doing. That would be a scanning and filtering of a broad swath of untargeted data. I do agree with him in his characterizing of that sort of drag net as being "ethically" wrong, but as for being impractical (from a tech perspective), it is mostly a matter money. The biggest hurdles being data volume, encryption and automatic transcription from voice to text.

[Txsleuth]

Wow...I am impressed...you really know your stuff...maybe you should apply to help out.

Regardless of the "legality" of this...as was pointed out in other posts...these taps are not being used to gather evidence for a trial per se...it is to stop another attack...or find out where the cells are, in and out of the US...IMHO..

And...I can't believe the democrats and some Rinos, like Specter and McCain, are going to force hearings that will just harm our clandestine terrorism fight more than it already has been...

It is a lose-lose plan for them....and ultimately a possible lose situation for the US...if this causes us to miss some intelligence that we might have had..if this had been kept secret.