Well, you should know that I intend no personal insult, but generically, yeah - paranoid. But fortunately, we don't have to simply speculate. Let's go back to Dryer's article from 2006, apparently the last time the sky fell on phone users.Vrede wrote:"paranoid" now? What happened to "tin foil hats"?
We don't know whether No Such Agency's witch hunts have been frivolous or not, do we? I don't have to speculate about possible future abuse. Current and recent history US national security abuse is well known, and the use of technology to suppress dissent is common worldwide.
Don Weber, a senior spokesman for the NSA, (after declining to discuss details).... "However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."
...
"... all national intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government "are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists." All government-sponsored intelligence activities "are carefully reviewed and monitored," Perino said. She also noted that "all appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on the intelligence efforts of the United States."
So maybe my friends at the ACLU, the Guardian, or whoever else finds this a big deal could come up with some evidence that what the NSA said 7 years ago was false, or has become false in the past 7 years.
Surely somebody must have been spirited off in the night never to be heard from again, or, more seriously, wrongly brought to trial because of this data. Shouldn't somebody have a tale of horror to share? Didn't anybody's Aunt Emmy get a visit from some men in black because she ordered ammunition from Russia over the internet?