[dirtboy]

You do not understand what is done. Their is no surveilance being done, only analysis of phone calling patterns.

I understand it just fine. I work with marketing databases for a living and understand what is being done far better than the average bear.

What happened is the fedgov asked for phone records they have no business having, and telecom companies handed over data they had no business handing over. There is no probable cause in the entire calling list for Verizon.

This sort of stuff could be done for PhD dissertations or studies in a number of different fields with absolutely no problem or issue of privacy.

A PhD candidate does not have the power to arrest and imprison people.

[tallhappy]

Your responses are incredibly illogical.

What happened is the fedgov asked for phone records they have no business having, and telecom companies handed over data they had no business handing over.

You should sue the telecom companies then and see how far you get.

[Ben Mugged]

In recent years, the FBI and other government agencies have investigated Amdocs more than once. The firm has repeatedly and adamantly denied any security breaches or wrongdoing. But sources tell Fox News that in 1999, the super secret national security agency, headquartered in northern Maryland, issued what's called a Top Secret sensitive compartmentalized information report, TS/SCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands - in Israel, in particular.

Investigators don't believe calls are being listened to, but the data about who is calling whom and when is plenty valuable in itself. An internal Amdocs memo to senior company executives suggests just how Amdocs generated call records could be used. "Widespread data mining techniques and algorithms.... combining both the properties of the customer (e.g., credit rating) and properties of the specific 'behavior.'" Specific behavior, such as who the customers are calling.

The Amdocs memo says the system should be used to prevent phone fraud. But U.S. counterintelligence analysts say it could also be used to spy through the phone system. Fox News has learned that the N.S.A has held numerous classified conferences to warn the F.B.I. and C.I.A. how Amdocs records could be used. At one NSA briefing, a diagram by the Argon national lab was used to show that if the phone records are not secure, major security breaches are possible.

From Fox News 13 December 2001. Link http://www.rense.com/general18/isr2.htm

[Edit35]

What happened is the fedgov asked for phone records they have no business having,

Do you also think it illegal for the govt., or anyone for that matter, to be "recording" everything on the internet?