My three biggest unanswered questions about the NSA discussion:

[Blue_Tires]

(sorry for making a new thread)

1. How deep is the involvement of corporate America in this whole scheme? Because let's be honest; they've wanted to stockpile our personal info as much as the NSA, if not more (obviously for different reasons, though)...Does it not make sense that two immensely powerful stakeholders would cooperate when they both want the same thing??

2. Is there any possible scenario where Americans would settle for a "reformed" NSA/DHS instead of outright elimination? I personally wouldn't; but if you're happy to live with a reformed model, what are the most pressing changes you'd want to see?

3. How much action will Congress really take on this? One of the lesser-talked-about parts is just how many people the NSA/DHS employ with that blank check from the Pentagon, along with the legions of contractors, logistics, support services, etc...Almost every congressional district in every state has had their hands out since 9/11, and for all the outrage and big talk, I've *never* known a congresscritter to willingly get off the gravy train...

[LearningCurve]

1. I'll hazard a guess at Number 3

None.

[Red Oak]

2. Response to #2

1. Open up the FISA court. Let's make sure that real warrants are required and that they are no rubber stamp. The court should be fully open if a US citizen is involved with non-redacted press access through FOIA at a minimum. Shine some light in here. Yes, we may lose a terrorist (damn, I'm sick of that word), but we won't lose the Constitution or our country to a dictator.

2. Get rid of PRISM and similar programs in the sense that there are effective "on-demand" back doors to all the major internet sources of private data. No one at a government agency should be able to type on a keyboard and just bring up all my internet info at will. They should have to go to an open court, get a warrant that is not secret and then present that to Google, Microsoft, etc and have them pull the data as requested. Slow the whole process down so abuse is harder to achieve.

3. Absolutely no bulk collection and storage of content such as emails or phone contents.

4. No collection of specific content without an open warrant. Even then, the service provider should be the one to provide the information to the government. The government should not have the ability to collect it on its own, at will.

5. No bulk meta-data collection.

6. No specific meta-data collection without a warrant.

7. Get rid of the National Security Letter gag order. If served, you can talk about it. Shine some light here.

This is certainly an incomplete list on a quick reply. These changes would be a good start.

I look forward to this discussion.

[Blue_Tires]

3. Welcome to the site and thanks for the input...

Excellent list, but my worry about reforms is that sooner or later they get sidestepped/circumvented/erased or whatever, depending on the whims of whoever is in charge...Because there is always a fresh DOD contract waiting out there for someone who invents a machine/program/algorithm that does things just a little better than the previous one -- Which is one of the main reasons why this whole thing has become such a tangled mess...