How Big Is the Surveillance State?

Fucking huge:

And as NBC News reports:

NBC News has learned that under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, the government has been collecting records on every phone call made in the U.S.

This includes metadata … which can tell the government a lot about you.  And it also includes content.
In addition, a government expert told the Washington Post that the government “quite can literally watch your ideas form as you type.” A top NSA executives have confirmed to Washington’s Blog that the NSA is intercepting and storing virtually all digital communications on the Internet.
Private contractors can also view all of your data … and the government isn’t keeping track of which contractors see your data and which don’t.
And top NSA and FBI experts say that the government can retroactively search all of the collected information on someone since 9/11 if they suspect someone of wrongdoing … or want to frame him.
The American government is in fact collecting and storing virtually every phone call, purchases, email, text message, internet searches, social media communications, health information, employment history, travel and student records, and virtually all other information of every American.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA spies on Americans’ credit card transactions as well.

Also, this:

So what happens to the communications that the government isn't supposed to have? When they're accurately identified as such -- often that's an NSA analyst's judgment call -- the relevant data is supposed to be destroyed forever. But there are exceptions, when the NSA can keep and store the purely domestic communications of American citizens, and even forward them onto the FBI.
Here's how The Guardian puts it:

...the Fisa court-approved policies allow the NSA to:

• Keep data that could potentially contain details of US persons for up to five years;
• Retain and make use of "inadvertently acquired" domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity;
• Preserve "foreign intelligence information" contained within attorney-client communications;
• Access the content of communications gathered from "U.S. based machine[s]" or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the US, for the purposes of ceasing further surveillance.
The broad scope of the court orders, and the nature of the procedures set out in the documents, appear to clash with assurances from President Obama and senior intelligence officials that the NSA could not access Americans' call or email information without warrants.

At a minimum, this makes President Obama's recent public statements look highly misleading, if not outright lies. Says Drum, after parsing the minimization procedure document, "The minimization procedures are fairly strict, but they do allow retention and dissemination of domestic data -- without a warrant -- under quite a few circumstances. 'Threat of harm' is pretty broad, as is 'criminal activity.' The latter, in fact, seems like a loophole the size of a Mack truck. It suggests that NSA could have a significant incentive to 'inadvertently' hoover up as much domestic information as possible so it can search for evidence of criminal activity to hand over to the FBI." Several other objections come to mind, but I presume that, in coming days, we're going to understand these procedures better than we do now, so let's put that line of inquiry on hold.

Yeah, that could never get abused.  Well, considering this, I guess any potential terrorists or other criminals out there don't have too much to worry about.  Now, reporters, political insurgents and other rabble rousers, on the other hand....