Congress (House & Senate) just passed (amidst the release of the torture report and the Gruber hearing) an amendment to the annual intelligence agencies’ budget bill (HR 4681, Section 309) that makes it legal to:
- Collect all electronic communications from everyone in the world
- Store all of that data for at least 5 years
- Store the data indefinitely if it’s encrypted or evidence of a crime (presumably until a supercomputer can break the encryption, assuming that hadn’t happened within 5 years)
- Disseminate the data (presumably at the inteliigence agencies’ own discretion, e.g. to your local police or the DEA)