As my previous post was a little offtopic, I'll throw my 2 cents in on the phone tapping and spying.
Technology and government. A dangerous mix. Do you really think that a government agency when given the tools that are capable of enabling spying would pass up the opportunity to use them? Eavesdropping is a natural side effect to any communication medium. The internet, email, phones, satellites, radio are all vulnerable to eavesdropping. It should be an automatic assumption that any given communication medium is at a bare minimum capable of being spied on. There are things that counteract this such as encryption, but we are getting dangerously close to breaking down that barrier. It is only a matter of time until the outrageously funded NSA produces the computational power to crack some of the top encryption algorithms. They are already building an extremely large underground facility in Utah capable of housing a mind-boggling amount of data and processing power.
The recent revelation of PRIZM and other activites is no surprise to me at all. Just by nature of technology itself it makes sense to create such tools and databases. Having the capability to log all phone call activity in the country is a priceless resource. Taking the next step and logging all internet traffic isn't possible with publically available resources as there is just far too much data however that isn't to say they cannot target an individual or small region or ISP and filter out what is needed. ISPs regularly comply with the federal government when required. They can just go to the ISPs routing center and filter the target traffic out. It would be unreasonable to say that they are doing this 24/7 to everyone as it is just far too much information and would require hundreds of supercomputers. 50 years from now? I can see realtime internet traffic monitoring occuring with AI analysis and trending. Tie that in with credit card transaction logs and all other points of data and you have a pretty solid technoprison. Don't even get me started on Facebook, Facebook is literally a willful submission of personal information. It is willfully submitting yourself to a public spy and data collection program. Facebook has arguably the juiciest database in the world with the only equal to Google. Sooner or later I can see Facebook and/or Google bending to the will of the government and allowing backdoor access to a treasure trove of data about citizens.
There definitely is a freightening future ahead. Just keep your head down
