rweisberger

On an unrelated note, perhaps a topic on this week's gabfest (or at least cocktail chatter) could be Kirk Johnson, who has worked so hard to obtain visas for Iraqis who assisted the US, and who were subsequently abandoned. His story is on the latest This American Life.

Hi Emily -

I am one of the people (like David) who is not bothered by the NSA thing.The idea of absolute privacy is an idealistic fantasy (which we seem to have no anxiety about losing every time we do a google search or post on FB), and I have no problem trading it for the tangible benefit of decreased risk. My question to you is - you are now in charge of US security. Would you monitor electronic communications for terrorist threats, and if so, how? And if not, why not?

But how does one get a warrant to filter millions or billions of communications looking for the worrisome one? Isn't that what the FISA court is about, in any case? I just don't think the NSA or the CIA is interested in anything but stopping real threats and there is no evidence, that I am aware of, that any of the surveillance has been used inappropriately. Bottom line, I don't know how one can do covert surveillance publicly.