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Politics : FREE AMERICA -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lady Lurksalot who wrote (5806)	5/11/2006 4:56:45 PM
From: Alan Smithee	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14758

Let me ask you this Holly. If you talk with a friend on a standard household portable phone, can you expect that your conversation is private? Although digital technology has gotten better, I'd say no. I know of people who have picked up and listened in to such conversations using a police type scanner. Hell, back when my kid was little, we'd occasionally pick up on the neighbor's telephone conversations on the baby monitor. Same question for a cell phone. If you are transmitting information into the ether where it may be intercepted, your right to privacy is compromised. But my point is, the content of a call is different from the fact the call was made. As I understand this program, they are not monitoring content, only calling patterns. Presumably if the computer spit out a suspicious pattern (say Laz speaking 10 times a day to a number in rural Pakistan on the Afghan border), then NSA would consider whether they would need to listen in on those conversations. OTOH, if Laz is speaking with his Uncle Cosmo in Poughkeepsie, I doubt the computer will spit out his calls.