Bill Binney, technical director of NSA at that time, disagrees. He already had a system in place that heavily used filters to only collect what was needed and e

Bill Binney, technical director of NSA at that time, disagrees. He already had a system in place that heavily used filters to only collect what was needed and excluded citizens, which was called "ThinThread." Later, Gen Michael Hayden (NSA Director at the time) switched priorities and went after everything, called TrailBlazer. They got way too much data and couldn't sift through it, even though they had the info in their systems. Binney quit the day after 911 and later revealed the program and the Gov't went after him, along with Thomas Drake and others. I'd watch the linked interview below. It gets really interesting when Binney talks about how much money and contracts were awarded to make TrailBlazer. All of the data storage, etc. Huge, massive contracts to keep it going. It also greatly increased their annual budget. ThinThread was internal, and fairly cheap. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinThread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinThread A very good interview with Binney who discusses this and a lot more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3owk7vEEOvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3owk7vEEOvs