Reply #9: That's not the rationale behind the program.

[Telly Savalas]

They don't consider a fifth of the population to be terrorist threats. Rather the idea is to data-mine millions of Americans, the vast majority of whom are non-terrorists, to find "suspicious patterns". From these patterns, they supposedly find evil-doers who hate our freedom.

I'm not saying this is valid. I'm just saying that's what it is.