"In 1975, a congressional investigation revealed that the NSA had been intercepting, without warrants, international communications for more than 20 years at the behest of the CIA and other agencies. The spy campaign, code-named "Shamrock," led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was designed to protect Americans from illegal eavesdropping.

Enacted in 1978, FISA lays out procedures that the U.S. government must follow to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches of people believed to be engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States. A special court, which has 11 members, is responsible for adjudicating requests under FISA.

Over the years, NSA code-cracking techniques have continued to improve along with technology. The agency today is considered expert in the practice of "data mining" — sifting through reams of information in search of patterns. Data mining is just one of many tools NSA analysts and mathematicians use to crack codes and track international communications.

Paul Butler, a former U.S. prosecutor who specialized in terrorism crimes, said FISA approval generally isn't necessary for government data-mining operations. "FISA does not prohibit the government from doing data mining," said Butler, now a partner with the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington, D.C".
Source: "NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls" http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

"Under the Clinton Administration Echelon certainly turned its attention to citizens of countries everywhere and monitored millions of calls and other communications.

Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the Canadian equivalent of the National Security Agency, told CBS's "60 Minutes" that the agency was monitoring "everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs."

Domestic spying is nothing new, there has been at least half a century of such activity in America. The naïveté of the public is at an all time high as they would rather switch off than engage in the mess that is modern day politics in America. The general public will believe that government spying on them is new, and secondly, they will just accept it because they are being told in a very unsophisticated fashion, that it is keeping them safe."http://www.illuminati-news.com/051306a.htm

60 Minutes Television Broadcast February 27, 2000. Steve Kroft reporting.

"If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it's run by the National Security Agency and four English-speaking allies: Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

The mission is to eavesdrop on enemies of the state: foreign countries, terrorist groups and drug cartels. But in the process, Echelon's computers capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world.

How does it work, and what happens to all the information that's gathered? A lot of people have begun to ask that question, and some suspect that the information is being used for more than just catching bad guys." http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1543347/posts

There is no expectation of privacy with the use of any type of phone, computer, or other communication device. Every phone book since at least WWII has warned that phone calls may be monitored by phone company personnel for a variety of reasons, including "obscene" language. We've had party lines, scanners, multiband radios since the start of broadcast communication.

The reason liberals are in denial about hating the Constitution is because none of the Constitution-violating programs they favor are in any danger of being thrown out by the federal courts. If the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments were as fully applied to federal law as the First Amendment, affirmative action, anti-monopoly legislation, gun control, the Endangered Species Act, and all federal welfare would be GONE. Our federal budget would be about twenty percent of its present value. They would riot until doomsday if the SCotUS started enforcing the whole Constitution.