FBI listens to american citizen's phone calls

***NSA and CIA are foreign intelligence operations and should not be involved in any citizen's data, metadata or spying in any way----but domestically the FBI and local police MUST be able to collect and even listen to citizen's information WHEN THEY HAVE PROBABLE CAUSE, A WARRANT AND CONDUCT A LIMITED SEARCH (no unreasonable search or seizure) ON THAT CITIZEN'S INFORMATION!!!!!

Interview with journalist Lawrence Wright who works on Al Qaeda, Arab terrorism, Muslim Brotherhood and other issues

FULL INTERVIEW HERE              BUSH and Illegal Wiretaps

6. One of the most jarring points in your narrative is an encounter with FBI agents who demand to know why you’ve been calling a number in Britain and ask about your daughter. Tell us what happened and what significance you attach to the incident.

In the movie, I talk about two members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force who came to my office to ask about phone calls that I made to a number in London. It belonged to a solicitor who represented some of the jihadis I had been interviewing. During the course of the conversation, they asked who “Caroline Wright” was. That’s my daughter. She was a university student at the time, not living at home. None of our phones were registered in her name. The only way I could imagine that they got her name was by listening to my phone calls.

There’s another instance that I didn’t mention in the movie. Before this episode, I had been told by a source at the Counter-Terrorism Center that my source had seen a summary of a telephone interview I had with Zawahiri’s cousin in Cairo. At the time, I figured that the Egyptians had covered the conversation and supplied it to the CIA. On December 16, 2005, when the New York Times revealed that the NSA was illegally wiretapping Americans, I thought otherwise.

I’m glad the JTTF came to my house to clear this matter up, but it’s an example of the danger of awarding government such extraordinary powers. A simple misunderstanding such as this could easily have led to having Caroline’s name placed on an FBI link chart, only two steps away from Al Qaeda.

One day, Al Qaeda will fade away, but we will still be left with the swollen security state that we’ve created to fight it. That’s another challenge we haven’t begun to face.