President Obama is not violating his liberal principles by defending the NSA. He is exercising them.

[reusrename]

61. Am I getting frustrated, yes, but I am not afraid of facing facts.

I don't really care too much about "pen registers" or, for that matter, the copying of all the content of all of our electronic communications. If it's digitized, go ahead and store it, why not?

The specific question that I am primarily concerned about is how the metadata is used.

It is used to create the targets for a counterinsurgency operation. Sometimes (or according to research, in most cases) the most influential person in a social network or insurgency is not the most high profile or most vocal individual in the group. With very large groups (OWS for example) this new technology identifies those individuals who's participation in the group is the most critical.

That, in a nutshell, is what the metadata is being collected and used for. Because the algorithms being used are easily handled by computers, and because no errors are introduced by trying to decode or translate any communication content, the system can create a very precise mapping of our social networks. Only actual metadata associated with each communication is logged into the software, and from that the algorithms sort out the social connections.

For some basic info about how the science is implemented, google the keywords: thesis+insurgent+social+network

There have already been reports of government cooperating with business to use this information to thwart the voice of the people. I don't think this can be tolerated in a free society.