People are merging two different mechanisms here, and its important to distinguish between the two. 1) Access to users when provided with a "warrant" or someot

People are merging two different mechanisms here, and its important to distinguish between the two. 1) Access to users when provided with a "warrant" or someother legal instrument. This is where for example a divorce court orders the message history of a person from facebook to confirm/deny infidelity. This is your "Facebook secure room/portal" business. You don't want any tom dick and harry having access to this as its a massive security hole. 2) Snooping. This is where apparatus is placed between the public and a company which allows the interception of all data. These are two very different mechanisms, 1) is a precision tool for getting information on a small amount of users. 2) is a blunt tool that allow people to stuff themselves full of information, it is also inherently very expensive(both in time, resources and analysis). both method 1 & 2 have been going on for many years. Its also been fairly well known for many years (schneier and crytptome have been saying this for a very very long time) So why did the NSA ask verizon (and most likley all the big players) for this list of who phoned whom, if they have all this information kicking around? two reasons: Its dirt cheap, and accurate. Instead of having to infer who was on what IP at what time, you have the canonical proof.