There was an
article yesterday that parsed Gonzales' letter to the Senate and offered some pretty informed speculation on just how the NSA is undertaking its surveillance of electronic communications in the U.S. It said in part:
"The content of electronic communications is usually considered to be the spoken words of a phone call or the written words in an electronic message. The term does not include the wealth of so-called transactional data that accompany every communication: a phone number, and what calls were placed to and from that number; the time a call was placed; whether the call was answered and how long it lasted, down to the second; the time and date that an e-mail message was sent, as well as its unique address and routing path, which reveals the location of the computer that sent it and, presumably, the author."
For the techies among us, there may be useful information here. As for me, it just scares the shit out of me.