A nagging thought on NSA surveillance, not terrorism related.

[Pholus]

1. They pick and choose their battles right now.

There is a finite amount of resources to dedicate to this, and your concerns fall under a different sphere of influence.

This is about cyberwar, not law enforcement (though the mission creep to it will likely occur as the technology matures). Doing what you request raises the program visibility too soon. It needs to be there for a while and get accepted.

Listening to Leahy's statement I think I have a decent theory...

Certainly, terror tracking is the main goal but Leahy specifically discusses the conflation of results from a productive program (overseas tracking) with an apparently non-productive program (domestic tracking).

Why would they do that? Well, first off you have to consider the legal opinion they are using. It is not illegal (or even considered collection) if a human doesn't look. But software trolling is okay and not a rights violation.

One precept of cyber-war is information control. The ability to influence a message rapidly in response to events. DARPA has their SMISC program ("Social Media in Strategic Communications&quot . They desire the ability to map out networks to discover the most influential sources and see which stories are taking hold in public opinion as fast as possible as a defense.

The offense side of the capability is being able to plant your own messages in return in places that will propagate perhaps even more quickly, countering an initial outrage inducing story even before it takes root.

Bush made it legal. Seemed whacky when he said the US had a right to do domestic propaganda, but all the pieces seem to fit quite well together.