Surprise! NSA data will soon routinely be used for domestic policing that has nothing to do with...

LOL

LTC (Join to see) - Colonel; I suspect that history is going to be somewhat kinder to Mr. Snowden then expected at first.

From my foxhole, I suspected it was going on... However, there are protocols when dealing with high classified programs. Clinton could take some notes? that email server was wide open to a Battalions worth of cyber units from Russia and China? God only knows what was deleted from those emails and the damage it is/could cause. Now this program and many, many more we don't know about... who knows where this will leads us.

LTC (Join to see) - Colonel; I'd agree that there was a possibility that Ms. Clinton's eMail server was "wide open" (but that hasn't been shown to be the case yet and [assuming all of the other procedural and legal steps were properly complied with is actually irrelevant]) but there is an old maxim that people who are looking for something in one place don't find it if it is another place (and find it even less often if they don't even know that that other place exists).

I will agree that Ms. Clinton's conduct was HIGHLY ill-advised. I am still not convinced that there is a "reasonable likelihood of conviction" if a prosecution is started (and apparently the Department of Justice [which is supposed to know more about the situation than I do] shares my opinion).

MSG Mitch Dowler - Master Sergeant; Since the Fourth Amendment states that only "persons, houses, papers, and effects" are protected from "unreasonable searches and seizures" it is quite possible to obtain a "legal opinion" that people's COMMUNICATIONS are NOT "constitutionally protected" (unless, of course, you want to follow the rulings of "activist judges").

Communications using phones, internet, etc. are the papers and effects of our times just as AR-15's, AK's and the like are the muskets of today covered by the second amendment. I sense a bit of facetiousness in your post so I imagine you were already in agreement with me.

As I have stated many times the Constitution and Bill of Rights do not grant rights. Rights are granted by our Creator as the Declaration of Independence gives proper credit to. The Constitution and Bill of Rights merely enumerate or affirm those God given rights every person everywhere in the world already has which are infringed upon by various degrees by the governments people have to live with.

Our forefathers did indeed fear that enumerating certain rights would give the false impression of being all inclusive as you have demonstrated by stating that methods such as pony express, telegram, computer and internet are not protected.

Please describe how you think they do this, where, and for what reason... you might think it's obvious but I'd really like to know how and why you think it's being done.

As a 20 year Signal Soldier retiree and with another 17 years working in the telecommunications field of the private sector I have a small amount of experience in this. The internet is a web of routers and optical carrier connections owned and operated by private carriers. The major connections take place in large regional hubs in large buildings where these carriers have collocation facilities and cross-connect to each other in meet-me-rooms managed by the building or collocation operator. The building has fiber connection paths through the building usually using an elevator shaft as a fiber a cable chimney. At some location along this path NSA, a private company contracted by NSA or often NSA posing a private company inserts themselves in that path. There are passive devices made by various manufacturers that these internet 10 Gig circuits or even larger pass through. These devices are also used to monitor and analyze voice or internet traffic for legitimate troubleshooting and quality of service reasons. These passive devices do not affect the circuit even if there is a complete power failure but they do allow the transmitted frames to be aggregated and passed off to other routers and servers for storage or analysis. These servers that perform storage and analysis functions may be thousands of miles away such as the facility near Salt Lake City, UT. NSA employees are common in these buildings but they look and act like any other technician working for a private company.

This is only one method.