So they've been grabbing all the E-mails....

[catnhatnh]

...I wonder for how long? Because I see terms like 6-7 years tossed around. And that reminds me of the Great Banks Robbery of 4-5 years back where banks got bailed out and banksters got bonuses while our government told us they could find no proof of criminal wrong doing...I'd hate to think our government sat right there on it's fat ass and watched RICO violation on an unmatched scale looting the pension assets of millions of working Americans and listened to the mealy-mouthed lies of "financial Wizards" while they withheld enough evidence to send thousands of predatory felons to jail for decades. I must be mistaken, right?

[leveymg]

1. Maybe it was NSA doing some of the "robbery" of financial records?

[MotherPetrie]

2. Bush got away with a very public illegal war and illegal torture. Obama blessed the latter and went

after the whistleblower who reported the torture.

Tells you all you need to know about Obama's priorities.

[DJ13]

3. If perceptions of the citizens are based on that info

The government must think were all bald, need money, and flaccid.

[catnhatnh]

4. Yep-being "modestly" violated is a fucking riot. N/T

[ieoeja]

5. Internet email passes through dozens of routers and gateways on the way to their destination.

Many of those log the email for disaster recovery. If the router goes down, it can continue routing the copy on to its next destination once it comes back online. These logs exist for variable times as decided by the owner of that particular router.

It uses a language that was invented, and at one time patented, by the NSA. When Vice President Al Gore asked the NSA to release this patent, the NSA refused. Gore acquired Newt Gingrich as an ally. Working together the two of them convinced the NSA to surrender their patent.

That step was a pre-requisite for the INTERNET today.

I have always assumed the NSA agreed to release the patent because it would give them the ability to see anything, anywhere on the INTERNET. I assumed the NSA had that ability because they invented the fucking thing and would make damned certain it included that ability.

When this first broke, one DUer actually said he was going to switch to Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol (VOIP). That had to be the funniest response of all to the call log revelation. Telephone companies track your usage, but they do not record every conversation being made. VOIP *is* recorded! It has to be digitalized to even be transmitted and those transmissions go through all those routers and gateways many of which probably create logs of....