Is The NSA Recording All Phone Calls? (And Do They Have Real-Time Access To E-mail/Chat?

Drum.

As I may have mentioned, I think very highly of Kevin Drum's blog. (The phrase "doing yeoman's work" comes to mind with respect to hist posts on the PRISM affair... That may be an annoying phrase, but it comes to mind...)

We can (I think), for now, remain basically agnostic about whether or not they actually can do or are doing the things in question, and consider the point in the abstract, as a thought-experiment. Like so:

Would it be permissible for a government agency to record all (cell) phone calls?

Seems to me that the obvious answer would be: no.

In fact, this is like something approaching a paradigm of something that the Government is not permitted to do...  (And I don't mean: legally.)

Doesn't it?

I mean, if they really are doing this, it's something that simply has to stop...isn't it? Doesn't this rather sound like something to which we would have to really put our collective foot down?