I don't think the NSA spied on EVERYONE in America [View All]

The National Security Agency is an entity with finite resources. They've got a lot of them, but eventually they run out of receivers, recorders, transcribers and analysts. And if they're looking at e-mail, even the hottest supercomputer in the world can't examine every e-mail that's sent by someone in the United States for keywords.

It's fun to think they're omnipotent, but they're not.

So let me put you in a situation. You're a mission control officer at NSA and you've been given the mission to spy on Americans. Which one would you do:

1) Attempt to process everything in case someone says a bad word against our little emperor...

or

2) Make a list of a couple thousand people you KNOW hate Bush, and try for continuous coverage on those specific targets?

I know who I'm going after if I'm MCO:
-every elected Democrat in America, even dogcatchers
-the leadership of the Democratic Party
-the hundred or so most-respected antiwar activists, liberal journalists, artists and certain cartoonists.
-the owners of the top twenty anti-Bush websites

I think Skinner was targeted. I don't think Southlandshari was.
I know Will Pitt was targeted, but have grave doubts about DemoTex.
I'd also be very suspicious if I was Eric Blumrich, Symbolman, American Stranger, Bartcop, Michael Rectenwald, earlg, or any other very prominent anti-Bush personality on the Internets. I don't think Bartcop will survive the year--I expect him to wind up like Danny Casolaro.
He isn't going after rank-and-file Bush haters--because there is no way in the world they can target 150 million people. No one is that big. He is going after the people who individually pose a threat to him. Most of us here do not.