Verizon: "We Can Hear You Now"

That was Jimmy Fallon's line about the revelation that Verizon (and presumably all other telecoms and ISP's) has for some time allowed the NSA and FBI to "mine" their vast amount of electronic data.  This is being done in the name of national security and counter-terrorism/counter-intelligence.  It's been going on for at least the past 7-8 years.

This is one of those damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't deals -- it's definitely sort of creepy, in a Big Brother-ish way.  Is there no privacy at all?  On the other hand, this is the modern world we live in, and it's our own technology and ingenuity which has led us to this point.

We should be concerned, but not paranoid.  No one is literally listening to our phone calls or reading every single text or email.  The number of transmissions is so huge, the mountain of data so enormous, that would be a full-time job for every person on the planet.

No, the spy-techies are engaged in something called traffic analysis, which searches for certain red-flag patterns in this mass of bits and bytes -- a few bad-guy needles in a colossal haystack.  And if they find them, it's probably better than not finding them, and we're probably a bit safer.  It's a trade-off.

Besides, you and I and 99.9% of the population are not the red flags.  We're not saying, writing or recording anything all that interesting.  With the possible exception of Buster's Blog, of course.