The Patriot Act opened the door for the government to pretty much do whatever they want (i.e. take away freedoms) in the name of safety. Shortly after 9/11, the NSA was putting networking equipment into every telecom hub in the country. All digital data is being routed through NSA equipment which analyzes the information for key words and stores the data for later retrieval, or it will set off a trigger which will flag it for human review.
This is really old news, and it's surprising that people didn't know it was going on. But I guess better late than never, I was really pissed off when I first found out about it, but this was at least 7 or 8 years ago. I've already accepted the fact that nothing will change as long as the majority of the country keeps arguing whether the Democrats or Republicans better represent themselves. When in reality the Democrat and the Republican party are both in cahoots together with the corporate owners of this country. Until we rally together and fight back for our collective interests, we'll keep getting pushed farther and farther into fascism and authoritarianism.
One more note, although it is sad to see a lot of people arguing with their neighbors about social issues (which are there to divide the population and keep us fighting each other rather than our true enemies), at least these people are semi-engaged. I'd say at least half (or more) of the American population just doesn't even care about politics, our government, or current affairs. They're so wrapped up and busy with their own lives, working 9-5, putting food on the table, taking Johnny to baseball. That when they get 2 hours out of the day for free time, they're not trying to worry about the greater problems facing our country, they just want to tune out and watch some Survivor or American 'Idle'. So I really doubt that our circumstances will ever change for the better in this country.
I lied, one more comment...the data is reportedly used to "identify and catch terrorists", but in reality something like 95% of the data is used for identifying and prosecuting domestic criminals (such as drug dealers). So it's just one more tool used by the government to spy on it's own citizens. Also did you know, if you're accused of being a terrorist, you lose your right to Habeus Corpus (i.e. the right to face your accusers) you could technically sit in Gitmo the rest of your life based on the government claiming you're a terrorist. Pretty neat, huh?
