Spying on America...is..good?
89667
Your question is especially valid in light of the fact that a warrant can be obtained up to three days after the fact.  Also, very few out of the thousands requested have ever been denied.  "Being able to respond quickly" is therefore not a valid excuse for faliure to get a legal warrant.  The question now becomes: "Who is hiding what?".
130407
no. this whole spy thing is making me sick. the bush admon has everyone so scared of the ambiguously defined terrorists that they're willing to give rights away blindly. Honestly, wake up!
242066
Sure, impress and scare them all.\n\nDo it on the new NSA spy engine called echelon.\n\nIt's in the news (indirectly), topical, very cool, very new and there is loads of information on it if you want to do a little digging.
230196
I don't particularly like it.  I mean, who really wants someone spying on them?  On the other hand, people say that it's necessary for our safety.  I mean, do we want another September 11th?  \n\nI guess what it really comes down to is, I don't mind them checking up on people as long as they use it wisely and don't go too far.  But then, who decides how far is too far?
1167122
The US and UK are way behind the curve in "taking the inititive" to monitor other countries.  Spy craft is a very, very old trade and the US in particular is historically not anywhere near that old.\n\nThere was a story that prior to World War I, the impression in europe was that England had to have a really awesome spy agency.  First, it was unthinkable that a country that powerful had no spy agency, but, second, there was no sign of them anywhere--they just had to be really, really good.  Actually, they had none.  So the British began developing their intelligence community (we now know of them as MI-5 and MI-6, which are the Military Intelligence branches for internal and foreign spying) after studying what everyone else was doing.  After WWI, the Polish spy people were trying to decipher (decode) the German enigma machine, an early and very successful message scrambler.  In the process, the Poles discovered that their country was about to be overrun and so they evacuated their services to England.  An Englishman named Touring, a pioneer in computing, was given the opportunity to assimilate the Polish code-breaking efforts and develop the English computer that gave Churchill the news straight from the German transmissions.  Today, that message traffic translation facility still works, though with fantastically better equipment, is called ECHELON.  \n\nThe Americans, meanwhile had been doing code work on the Japanese.  We learned most of our modern spycraft by watching the Japanese and German spy agencies among us.  The FBI was getting quite good at it independently of the military who watched things abroad, particularly in the Pacific.  Our State department had people who carried on normal embassy and consulate work, but had contacts with the military or even FBI when something looked useful or suspicious.  It was because of the varied scope of our information gathering that after WWII we organized a spy agency clearing house--the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA.\n\nEverywhere US and UK spies go or have been, other countries have had their people there first--we aren't taking any initiative, as in first response.  Monitoring other countries have gone on throughout all of human civilization.  The tools to do what we do today were first developed in order to understand what the others had already done.  We just have better equipment now than we've ever had before, and it can scour through more and more information than was ever possible before.  But we still generate still far, far more information than they can fully scrutinize, so it isn't the end of the world, okay?
312239
Aboslutely not! Any nation willing to exchange privacy for security deserves and will have neither.That is a rough quote from one of our founding fathers.Franklin or Jefferson,I think.
360681
IF it is done legally, then no.  As long as the spying is consistant with Constitutional protections against unwarrented intrusions into my private life, then I won't worry.  Let the government agencies get warrents first.
1001947
The government, especially all spy and security agencies, is going to do what it wants when it wants.  I think it is just a  fluke that we know they have been listening in on us this time.\n\nAs for me, I don't plan on doing anything to harm the government so I don't really care.  We are already being watched over by Big Brother, why should listening in matter?
509328
Sounds good on the surface, but there is far too much room for abuse of power, as if the government isn't already abusing its power, but I won't go on about the obvious.\n\nShort answer: No.
125248
It is forbidden to spy on people in the US, by people in the US. We have listening stations outside the US, they do the work
1128284
It is not a 'spy center', however they did give out information on peoples movements in the internet, meaning that yahoo itself was not made for the purpose of spying on people.\n\nYeah google, ect might be a good idea but it is silly to do\nbecause what can they possible accomplish by just\nknowing what you see/ect    \n\n(with the exception of shopping and stuff)
514810
Spy satellites and communications.  That's all I can say.  If you know where the enemy is and what they are planning, then they have already lost the battle.  Good intelligence is a premium!
3176
I am not a Republican, but I play one on TV...:-) Seriously, I believe that they feel trading some freedom for more security is a wise policy.  I understand the need to feel safe, and I am generally in favor of measures that increase our security.  However, that does not extend to the Patriot Act, which I see as a slippery slope away from what America is supposed to be.
512026
In reference to surveiling anyone at any time for no reason, this would be wrong.\n\nHOWEVER\n\nIf in reference to surveiling when whomever you are talking to is a known or highly suspected terrorist, I say snoop away in the name of national security. It has been a long practice in war to intercept enemy communications. Whether it be from radio transmisions in WWII, or letter interception in WWI and the Spanish American War. Courier interception in the Revolution, or whatever. It is the duty of the intel community to gather any and all information possible to defeat the enemy in time of war.\n\nNow as for suspected criminal activity, the proper legal channels must be gone through. Warrants, guidelines, laws, etc.
80703
Things that would harm the 'security' of the government. Sounds nice, but in reality, they hide anything that would interfere with the status quo. Since they don't want a wrong impression of what they have screwed up in the past, they hide pretty much everything they use to make decisions and the actions they take under the premise of 'the interest of national security'. This could be technology which would help enemies (so-called; expanding who constitutes an 'enemy' greatly expands what can be kept secret), anything that would ruin our economy or the main corporations which support it, anything that might reveal how our weapons work, policies about how things are REALLY kept secret, plans for keeping the government (and friends) safe after a major attack, strategic sources of materials which aren't publicly disclosed already, scientific data that might cause panic, scientific data that might cause distrust of the government, inventions which could be used as weapons (yes, they monitor patent applications), and all the usual things like who is a spy for who, how we monitor communications, how other countries monitor our communications (and sell us the info), how much money our intelligence agencies spend, and who in our country is suspected of being a threat to any of the above things.\nI think that pretty much covers it. If anything like paranormal activity, UFO's, or antigravity technology falls under the categories above, welllllll....\nAnd don't forget that they won't tell you if something they tell you is really false or misleading so that you don't investigate something else they are hiding. The interconnected web of confidentiality agreements, classified documents, and disinformation is not an accidentaly complicated system. It is meant to confuse people. Just like the aisles in a store which make you go around things just so you spend more time looking at and buying things you otherwise weren't interested in. It's all in the marketing.
510880
just to spy on military secrets...
141378
Not that this is an excuse, but honestly, do you really think that your life is so interesting that the government cares enough about it to snoop through your stuff?  If it is, mad props and all, but I'm just not that concerned with the idea of Big Brother knowing what I REALLY think about my co-workers and that I'm one of those nerds who fills out online surveys for free stuff.