That's actually a great point. After the Snowden revelations, politicians justified some of the surveillance programs by claiming they were only looking at the

That's actually a great point. After the Snowden revelations, politicians justified some of the surveillance programs by claiming they were only looking at the metadata, not the content, as if that made any difference. So that's one of the excuses they use to create the appearance of legality. https://www.npr.org/2013/06/21/193578367/calling-it-metadata-doesnt-make-surveillance-less-intrusive https://www.npr.org/2013/06/21/193578367/calling-it-metadata...