I enjoyed this show. I certainly agree the spirit of the 4th amendment has been violated by the federal government and now many local officials think it’s cool to jump on the spy wagon. I don’t support the collection of phone meta data as there is sensitive information that can be extrapolated from that kind of seemingly innocuous record.

But let me help clarify something for you. The name of the person/company who owns a certain telephone number is not extrapolated information. It is the meta data. The owner, how long the call was, what cell tower/s the cell phone accessed during the call, the number the phone connected with, what calling plan the phone is using, the number of characters in a text, if a file was sent with the text, how big the file was. These are all examples of meta data. The data that they claim they are not collecting is the content of the call or text. Law enforcement has always had access the the name identifying the owner of a phone number. People can us the internet to find out who owns a phone number? Observe my stunned expression.

The researchers may have even known it was a crap study just to have something to publish. I feel sorry for David Pakman for wasting his time on this nonsense and I feel bad for you rebroadcasting his failure. Please be more alert in the future.

This was a great episode. I was aware of the NSA spying and was against it, but for the most part, was not surprised, shocked, or outraged to the extent that I should have been. It was not until the clip from The Young Turks in this episode that I realized the extent of the entire situation. The Young Turks were right in saying that your home is the one place that you should feel safe in, where your privacy should not be invaded. Then they go on to examine our rights to defend ourselves from intruders, yet not from the government violating our rights. Powerful stuff.

Brian Smith: Interesting opinion on Dan Carlin, that’s not the way I interpreted him at all. Maybe there was something in the way I clipped those segments that took out some important context without me realizing it. Dan is traditionally one of the strongest 4th amendment supporters I listen to. If you want to listen to his comments completely in context I highly recommend the episode where those clips were featured: http://www.dancarlin.com//disp.php/csarchive/Show-267—-Magic-Lamp-Loopholes/4th%20Amendment-spying-surveillance

the spying episode was informative and I agree with most of the views in the segments. not sure about the Dan Carlin segment thought, very appeasing in my opinion. you can spy on this but not that… spy on him, but not me??