[sinkspur]

Don't post them to me.

Post them to Alberto Gonzales, and the legal teams at Verizon, AT&T, and BellSouth. Oh, and to Trent Lott, Lindsay Graham, Jane Harman, and Dick Durbin, all of whom were briefed about this surveillance.

What "blanket sweep"? Phone numbers, with no identification, would hardly be helpful to anybody unless the NSA was already tracking a particular number that had been in communication with an al-Qaeda terrorist suspect.

Cluster-identifier programs could then identify who, in the US, had been in communication with that particular number.

Any surveillance of the content would require a warrant.

[ndt]

"Phone numbers, with no identification..."

Phone numbers are personally identifiable information. That is how the law is written.

"would hardly be helpful to anybody unless the NSA was already tracking a particular number "

Then get a warrant for the numbers they want to track. I have no problem with that. Data mining in this context is only useful to find the unknown AKA "fishing expedition"

"Cluster-identifier programs could then identify who, in the US, had been in communication with that particular number."

And tag more false positives that correct hits, subjecting countless innocent Americans to government scrutiny without probable cause.