By the way, ALL Internet traffic IS routed overseas.

Update: As to the analog vs. digital in the title

When you're on the backbone, you see pretty much everything, no matter where it's going. It's more a matter of what you ignore.

Lots of people have suggested that the NSA program has something to do with Echelon, a massive project that vacuums up communications of all kinds from all over the globe. The problem is that Echelon has been around for a long time and no one has ever complained about it before — so whatever this new program is, it's something more than vanilla Echelon.

Echelon is perhaps the most powerful intelligence gathering organization in the world. Several credible reports suggest that this global electronic communications surveillance system presents an extreme threat to the privacy of people all over the world. According to these reports, ECHELON attempts to capture staggering volumes of satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic traffic, including communications to and from North America. This vast quantity of voice and data communications are then processed through sophisticated filtering technologies. This massive surveillance system apparently operates with little oversight. Moreover, the agencies that purportedly run ECHELON have provided few details as to the legal guidelines for the project. Because of this, there is no way of knowing if ECHELON is being used illegally to spy on private citizens.

Previous inquiries by the European Parliament have resulted in reports detailing the existence of a surveillance system known as ECHELON, which is led by the NSA in conjunction with its counterpart agencies in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. According to the reports, ECHELON has communications receiving stations all over the world and attempts to capture all satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic communications worldwide, including communications to and from North America. Computers then sort through conversations, faxes and emails searching for keywords and other triggers. Communications that include triggers chosen by the intelligence agencies are transcribed and forwarded for further investigation. [...] "It appears that the NSA is engaged in a surveillance system of epic proportions," Steinhardt said. "If these reports are true, ECHELON dwarfs the extensive surveillance of Americans already conducted by the FBI and other domestic law enforcement agencies."

Not clear on how this "internet-mining" thing would work... seems to me that monitoring the internet would require complicity from ISPs or email service providers. Someone should be asking Comcast, Verizon, Google, Yahoo, etc whether or not they've given the NSA access to their data or networks without warrant.

The Bush administration has recently come under fire for authorizing the National Security Agency to spy on people in the United States suspected of terrorism ties. Gwen Ifill discusses the powers of the NSA with John McLaughlin, senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University and former acting director of the CIA, and James Bamford, author of two books about the NSA.

such as that [called for in an 'open letter' reply to] House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, in her letter reproduced here. Last I heard, some mainstream Democrats were too afraid of a backlash (losing votes in the next election) to go as far as to join [that writer's] call for impeachment . . .