Monday's article is 16 pages long, but to me the most memorable line was that the NSA intercepts 1.7 billion e-mails a day. It seems silly that they cast a net so wide when it all can't possibly be processed.
This security business suffers from the same flaws it did before 9/11. We just don't have any meaningful or coherent way to organize and act on the collected data.
How can you be sure?
They have very sophisticated systems. I'm sure they can sort out a good deal of useful information. They may not be able to get it all, but, for instance, if they need to look up a certain individual, they can just pull up his personal email (as part of his profile), and use that for their purposes. If they know everything, they may not necessarily be able to use all of it, but they can use some of it (maybe not right at the moment) to great affect. (the email is just an example, they collect much more information than email, of course).
As someone whom has worked for govt before, they are idiots. Yes, they can collect millions of emails, web traffic, and have state of the art logging systems, but they do not have the resources to glean useful information. It is a shot in the dark most of the time. They do a lot of trending based on people/organizations they know to be looking for.
If you want to fuck with them and add yourself to the "false positive" column, say words like "terrorist, israel, bomb, kill, president, bin laden" throughout a phone conversation. Oh yes, you'll get flagged but they know pretty quick you're a fake.
These people who are reading through this info are quite stupid, usually out of college bumming around the govt until they can get a real fucking job when they get their students loan paid for by the US taxpayer. If the US had read enemies instead of the CIA created terrorist orgs they can "fight" to justify their absurd budgets and existence, the US would really be in a world of totally fucked.
Recently I watched "FIX News" that NYC has had over 100+ attempted terrorist attacks since 9/11. LOAD. OF. SHIT. If they can prevent all the terrorist attacks they can should have no problem stopping all the murders and rapes in the city!