[TheRealThing]

just 1 ? why wasn't you crying about this 7 or 8 years ago did you and the tea party just read the law

Fill us all in there vector. How does the law read? I thought the Patriot Act gave authorities the power to go after terror suspects and to keep tabs on them. The Tea Party was allegedly profiled and targeted by the IRS because of their political views according to sworn testimony by Lois Lerner.

For the record, I'm all for close scrutiny of the type we've been talking about here for anybody living in the US who is not a citizen, or possibly those who have recently been granted citizenship, and especially those of ethnic origins known to have publicly sworn to overthrow the United States. The right to privacy as directed by the US constitution should still be a guarantee that the feds feel compelled to provide for US citizens IMO.

But, reluctantly, to address what seems to be your point. If they're mining over 3 billion calls a day for clues to track down and/or ID terror suspects, why would they necessarily need to 'store' all of these records after supposedly they've already served their 'data mining' purpose?