Then it is leaked that no longer do the royal "they" have to determine that both sides of a conversation must be foreign before it can be "collected" without FISA court consent.  Now they can "unwittingly" collect on all US citizens and the way it looks right now they are unwittingly collecting everything, and building databases of our connectivity (which is exactly how they begin breaking into terrorist organizations....they are treating every single one of us as if we are a potential current or future terrorist).

You add to this that little item that Jeralyn had up not long ago  about how the FBI doesn't allow recordings of interviews, they have two agents and one takes notes and they "type interviews up" and the next thing you know you have lied or obstructed......with all that information collected on each one of us and those abilities to apply pain and suffering you've got turnkey fascism.

Instead, we've abrogated those responsibilities, and have allowed those we elect to public office do whatever they want and / or think best. We've further allowed our media to consolidate and re-consolidate under corporate suzerainty to the point where there are just a handful of independent sources left nowadays. And finally, we blithely accept their re-prioritization of what's important, and as a result we're now willingly fed a steady diet of gossip and (often ignorant) opinions, and we're to fat and lazy to demand the mundane but factual data we require as an effective, informed and functioning citizenry. This in turn has eroded our sense of shared community, as the desires of the individual or the few repeatedly trump the needs of the many.

All I'm saying is that the powers-that-be haven't been doing anything to us, which we haven't already allowed them to do through our own not-so-benign acquiescence.

When President Eisenhower warned the nation in his January 1961 farewell address about the looming menace of an encroaching military-industrial complex, he wasn't just talking about the government, but rather about also the multitude of corporate interests who were then rapidly becoming vested in the construction and maintenance of our burgeoning national security apparatus.

Corporations do in fact wield enormous power and influence over our lives, because over time we've allowed them to garner both in the name of customer satisfaction and consumer convenience. When you are a frequent business traveler as I am, the airlines -- or Expedia, Travelocity, etc. -- will invite you to leave your credit card information on electronic file with them for future convenience whenever you make an airline / hotel reservation. We can either click yes or no, but how many of us have really considered the real implications of that "friendly suggestion" when we do so?

The capacity for corporations to cross-reference our data in a collaborative effort to build customer databases profiles is really staggering, and they've been able to do so because we've ceded that ground to them. Remember how many of us years ago would register with a media website like the Washington Post, etc., only to suddenly find our e-mail inboxes soon overflowing to capacity with unwanted solicitations because that media source sold their own e-mail database -- with our addresses in it -- to another corporate interest? That was just the tip of the internet iceberg.

In that regard, the surveillance activities in which the NSA has been engaged is not necessarily domestic espionage, although the potential for that is certainly there. Rather, and with corporate cooperation, the feds are simply amassing a consolidated database for their own future use, with the reams of personal information which those corporations have long since been gathering on us on their own databases -- our phone records, company billings, bank statements, personal purchases, credit reports, academic history, even our own health files, as the technology for electronic medical records makes them available.

The aforementioned discussion I'm talking about must center upon our willingness and ability as private U.S. citizens, both as individuals and in the collective, to assert our constitutional rights to the integrity of our own personhood, which includes our personal data. We need to stop allowing either to be treated as a corporate commodity to be bought, sold, bartered, or given away upon request or subpoena of the federal government.

In my honest opinion, it's not going to do any long-term good to focus solely upon government misbehavior and intrusion upon our lives, if we're not also willing to simultaneously require our corporate citizens to adhere to the same prescribed standards of conduct that we would now seek to impose upon any government-initiated oversight over our private activities and proclivities.

I do what I can to slow down the inevitable, but I know it's a losing game. The government can track my movements, where I stay and what I purchase when I travel. So, at this point, voting for candidate A or candidate B holds little interest, and gives me little faith.

"These cards are marked."

If we allow our corporate citizens to amass these databases about us, it naturally follows that the national security complex is going to be very attracted to what's potentially inside those databases. After all, why should they re-invent electronic wheels, when there are virtual warehouses full of them already in existence?

We can't simply look at government behavior through a silo, and believe that if we somehow place limits upon the conduct of federal operatives that everything will be fine. As long as those corporate databases with our personal information exist, the temptation on the part of those operatives to find some way around prospective restrictions to get their hands on that data will remain in play.

Rather, we need to think of and employ some means to limit the extent and range of those databases themselves -- i.e., how long corporations can store personal data about our phone calls, transactions, etc. -- rather than play whack-a-mole with those operatives who might have or desire access to that data.

Are you undertaking communications surveillance on millions of Americans?  (non-responsive) Answer: We are not undertaking communications surveillance on millions of Americans. (referring to those who are literally invisible for communications surveillance purposes)