on international flights. If you travel or, like me, live outside the U.S., or communicate with those who do, you probably know that the American government can monitor the content, not just the metadata, of every international call or message. This is just a fact of life. The government doesn't deny it. It has been doing it to the extent technologically feasible, under administrations of all stripes, since it became possible to do so.
The government also monitors the metadata, which is more amenable to dissection by the search algorithms. Since the NSA is the largest single employer of mathematicians in the country I'm guessing it has some pretty good algorithms, and it is likely the authorities get more information, more easily, from the metadata than from the content.
But the content is subject to being inspected nonetheless.
I hear the howls of indignation over the collection of metadata of domestic communications. Of course, the government can actually read my private mail and listen to my telephone calls (and yours, too, if you correspond or communicate internationally), and now people are up in arms because the government collects data about, but cannot legally read or listen to, their domestic mail and calls. I understand the outrage. Still, as an expatriate, I can't help thinking to myself 'I should be so lucky'.
And when I hear President Obama say that nobody was listening to calls between American citizens, I have to beg to differ. I called my Mom and Dad today (it's their anniversary and tomorrow is her birthday) and, since it's an international call, the bits and bytes representing our conversation were certainly intercepted. All three of us are American citizens.
One implicitly agrees, when applying for a passport, to forfeit the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures by travelling abroad. That is the reality. The government may or may not perform secret kabuki to get a blanket warrant or executive order allowing it to scoop up everything, it's impossible to know, but the reality is that the government does not need probable cause or even reasonable suspicion to spy on Americans abroad. It spies on everyone overseas. It is not alone. A reasonable surmise is that most other governments, for instance India, also have some ability to intercept, or coerce service providers to surrender, telecommunications and internet traffic.
The U.S. embassy in every country where I have lived or travelled asks American visitors and residents to register, for their own safety in the event of an emergency. I've never bothered. I've always figured the government already had my mobile number, and pretty much anything else it wanted to know about me, with the possible exception of the records of my transactions at the foreign bank where I have a small account. Thanks to FATCA, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, the government will soon have my bank records as well.
Sometimes when I'm on my way to the departure lounge, and I'm standing in the X-ray machine or the electronic sniffer with my hands over my head in the classic posture of surrender universally adopted by captured soldiers and criminals caught in the act, I'm glad to be leaving the surveillance state that America has become. But I have few illusions. I know it can follow me wherever I go, and with even more intrusive methods than if I stayed at home.