It goes back hundreds of years! National intelligence agencies have consistently managed to get full intercepts. Way back in the day, they counterfeited wax seals and steamed open letters. In the 1800s, they got telegraph printouts. In the early 1900s, wires. In the 60s-70s, tapes. Then hard drives. It's just part of what governments do ;)

I think that the big difference today is that they can analyze all data that they can grab. Back in the Good Old Days, you had to devote considerable manpower to this analysis; if you wanted to read letters, you had to be specific because you simply didn't have the resources to look at everyone's mail. This is why most people (including me) have no problem with the idea of monitoring POTS lines; it ties up a considerable amount of resources, so the police are much more likely only to tap the phones they think will get results.

Now, we've gotten to the point where the challenges facing mass surveillance are political rather than physical. I think that this is a lot more dangerous than 1800s police looking at telegraph printouts line by line.

Yes, that's an excellent point. And capabilities for data analysis are improving rapidly. Google still has far better tools, but the NSA has the intercepts. And it will get the tools. Eventually, it will become the Eschaton ;)

This was an interesting and early revelation, but it wasn't until the Snowden documents that we understood what this closet really meant. We had no idea the government was recording every phone conversation in the u.s., every email, etc... We still had some hope that the rule of law as being followed and that this closet was just a way to make targeted surveillance easier.

> but it wasn't until the Snowden documents that we understood what this closet really meant.

> We had no idea the government was recording every phone conversation in the u.s.

> We still had some hope that the rule of law as being followed

All lies. This was well covered on slashdot when it happened. We all knew exactly what it meant.

Snowden's release was iron clad and incontrovertible, which was refreshing, but it also detailed the extent to which private tech companies outside of AT&T were aiding the federal government in their illegal activities.

Even the most paranoid nutbag commenting on those old slashdot threads couldn't imagine how bad it was going to get. Reality outpaced the conspiracy theorists.

This is my recollection too. I think everyone held their breath hoping we'd pull away from the edge.

>some hope that the rule of law as being followed

Wasn't it already ruled illegal prior to Snowden and the phone companies had to be retroactively indemnified by congress?

Close, I think that the premise the Bush administration used to obtain this information, "dragnet surveillance", was ruled illegal, which exposed the phone companies to lawsuits. Congress then retroactively indemnified them.

EDIT: This is it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_%...