We've been told that the US government only collects communications of or with foreign persons. Or rather people who may be foreign nationals or on foreign soil. Or rather if 51% of the available evidence seems to indicate that the person may be foreign or not in the US.
The definition of "collect" has also been revised a bit as it seems that quite a lot (possibly everything) that is transmitted digitally is then archived and the 51% rule applies to getting authorization to actually look at something from a specific person.
We don't really KNOW anything for certain since the the Director of National Intelligence has already admitted that he lied in testimony to Congress and the bar for truthfulness in talking to the public is set significantly lower. Even working with what's on the table that the administration has confirmed, there's a big chunk of WTF. I did a quick survey of my phone contacts, email, and facebook. Looks like there are a few ways that I (and most people) may be already targeted by the governmental Eye of Sauron.
check out my reasoning after the squiggle
To begin with, I absolutely shouldn't be on anybody's spy list. I've left the country once to go to Canada, and I don't even have a passport. That said, a quick perusal of my digital life shows a number of ways that NSA pattern-matching robots might find me interesting:
For a period of time a few months ago, the internet thought I was in Australia. It was a weird router/internet service provider malfunction that assigned me an odd IP address. I only realized it when I tried to watch something on Hulu and I was blocked for not being in the US. Hulu-watching is kind of a rarity in our house, so there's no telling how long I was an internet Aussie but it's a bit of circumstantial evidence that would help build a case that I was either foreign or out of the country.
I have a number of friends and correspondents that are either not US citizens or don't live in the US or both. It would be hard to pin down a percentage that I talk to them vs sticking to my entirely domestic buddies, but there's that. If you count the spam I get from apparently Russians and maybe Nigerians, my communications are overwhelmingly with foreign nationals.
Then there's the most insidious bit in that a suspect's entire web of contacts is immediately subject to heightened scrutiny, and there's no telling how many degrees of separation it takes. I know a few lawyers that have worked with the ACLU-- how many indirect links does it take before the government decides that I am in regular communication with Guantanamo detainees?
So, we've had bombshell stories about government surveillance that the government has largely confirmed, though asserting that everything's perfectly legal and above board. I can follow the government's reasoning for designating potential enemies of the state and see where I fall right into the net-- and I'm just a regular duffer, just getting by. People who are doing important international work are pretty much guaranteed to have their Constitutional rights tossed aside on a regular basis.
Whether this shit is legal or not, it has got to stop.