Nowadays the equivalent is an iPhone address list, often kept in the cloud, or buddy lists for chat rooms. The Washington Post reveals, based on the leaked powerpoint slides of Edward Snowden, that the National Security Agency has been scooping up 250 million such contacts a year, mainly abroad, but it inevitably has gathered millions or tens of millions of such records from Americans. Back in the 1980s, if the Federal government had wanted to see the address book I kept in a kitchen drawer, it would have had to apply to a judge for a warrant. But now the NSA can gather that information at will. The prohibition under which it operates, of not actively spying on Americans, is clearly impossible to implement in a world where communications bounce around the world from server to server.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 21:33:20 +0000