ALL phone calls in the US are recorded and accessible to the government, claims former FBI agent

By Daily Mail Reporter  5 May 2013   Comments (162)

A former FBI counterterrorism agent has hinted at a vast and intrusive surveillance network used by the U.S. government to monitor its own citizens. Tim Clemente admitted as much when he appeared on CNN Wednesday night. Discussing the Boston Marathon attack and past telephone conversations of Katherine Russell and her now deceased husband, suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Clemente said that those conversations would be available to investigators. ….To Read More…..

My Take - I posted this not because I was surprised, but that others seem surprised.  There are a number of interesting aspects to this.  It is my understanding that the NSA can't monitor internal U.S. communications.  I never had much confidence in this for obvious reasons.  How can they avoid monitoring communications in the U.S. if they are monitoring the communications of international forces working to undermine the nation to individuals within the nation?  An example would be the VENONA intercepts between the Soviet Union and Stalin's spies here in the U.S., like the Rosenbergs. 

Another aspect is ...... data overload.  How can anyone keep track of all that information?  The data, if they really are recording and storing ALL those phone calls, would be a "librarian's" nightmare.  Even if it was all on computers there would still be a massive retrieval problem.  How could you categorize all those conversation?   Do we realize how much people talk about that is blatantly meaningless?  Pay attention to your own phone conversations.   Could it be done?  Maybe….but the manpower, the technology, the cost would be so overwhelming that it would be impossible.  It would be like trying to kill a fly with a nuclear bomb.  However…..when they are focused on people of interest……that is where this would work. 

So then, what would you have them do? When terrorists like the Boston Bombers  strike the first question you hears is; why didn’t you know about them?  So what would you have them do to find out ahead of time what these kinds of people are planning?  Guess?