>The government should have long ago explained the parameters of surveillance that touches Americans, Aftergood said. There should be no dragnet surveillance a

>The government should have long ago explained the parameters of surveillance that touches Americans, Aftergood said. There should be no dragnet surveillance against Americans, according to the Constitution. All investigations need to be specific, against specific individuals, and evidence for probable cause needs to be given to a judge (which is not done through fishing expeditions, in case it wasn't "clear" enough for the NSA, because I noticed they're playing the "incompetent" card lately, when the only other alternative is playing the "guilty" card). I'd also argue dragnet surveillance shouldn't be done against any country (except perhaps in time of war - declared war, not this perpetual drone war US is having all over the world now), but we should take things one step at a time, I guess. > One U.S. official, for example, told reporters on a conference call that about 56,000 communications of Americans were inadvertently intercepted each year before Bates shuttered the program. The official called that a "relatively small number." Is he joking? Yeah, I can see how when NSA spies on billions at a time, tens of thousands doesn't seem much of a big deal to them, but those tens of thousands could include all politicians and judges in US, and then some. This is no different than saying "out of the thousands of 'targets' we killed with drones, only a few hundred were civilian - which is a "relatively small number" given the circumstances (drone attacks not being surgical)". Who would accept such an argument? Does the police get to say that out of a few gang members shot, only a few shot by them were innocent civilians? I don't think so (well, ok, I know recently that's actually exactly what has been happening with the police in US, too, but it used to not be the case, and shouldn't be the case).