>>>It's really a question of economics.
>>>
>>>Not sure why everyone fails to see that.
>>
>>What does warrentless searches have to do with economics?
>
>It's cheaper to not go through FISA??????
>Kinda like it's cheaper to drive without car insurance, so I think I should.

Two things connect this domestic spying with economics. First is the logistics: if you plan to revamp the Enigma (or whatever was it called) project, to eavesdrop on two million phone calls every hour, you'd run into a physically impossible amount of paperwork. The FISA court is limited by amount of staff, and requires at least that you know _something_ about the person being spied upon. It doesn't cover random spying at all, not that I heard of.

The second thing is that it's entirely anonymous. You can't know whether you were spied upon or not. And if you're not just the average Joe, but a corporation with some intellectual property, you don't know whether it's still only your property, or is it a shared property now.

There must have been something fishy, or else Risen wouldn't have found a dozen leakers of information about this. And I recall having read something confirming the industrional espionage angle, though it was a month ago and I didn't install any grabber plugin to start archiving these things as I stumble upon them. Maybe I should.