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With the now-commonplace revelation of US mass-data gathering and surveillance, there is still a fundamental gap in the mainstream media and news outlets containing factual description of these programs. Since the release of documents by Edward Snowden, the shorthand "NSA" is tossed about with little comprehension or context. At the EmptyWheel blog, Marcy Wheeler has done an invaluable service by collating and cataloging "A Guide to the 5+ Known Intelligence Community Telecommunications Metadata Dragnets".
I've been laying this explanation out since USA Today provided new details on DEA's International Dragnet, but it's clear it needs to be done in more systematic fashion, because really smart people continue to mistakenly treat the Section 215 database as the analogue to the DEA dragnet described by USAT, which it's not. There are at least five known telecommunications dragnets (some of which appear to integrate other kinds of metadata, especially Internet metadata).
Explaining in detail what is known to be collected in five or more programs, by four or five agencies in separate domestic and international operations is something that resists a soundbite. This concise presentation of the known mass surveillance programs is the most accessible to date.
You may also be interested in Cryptome's periodic tally of Snowden document releases.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @10:17PM
> That's a general tactic of the military.
It isn't a military thing, it is a profession thing. All professions develop their own jargon, the more complexity in the profession the more dense the jargon. The computer industry is a sterling example of that.