Surprised?

A week ago, Ars Technica had a writeup on NSA metadata collection, saying that the FISC had approved Obama's tweaks.  What I couldn't figure out, though, was why anyone might think the court wouldn't approve them.

They approved MORE blatantly unconstitutional collection, so why would they not approve making it a hair less so?  Really, the changes were basically in the "who cares?" zone, they were so minor.  But I can't think of any possible way the court would say no.

And we should feel better, why, exactly?

Following up on the NSA getting call trap data from Verizon (and others, presumably), we find out the NSA (and FBI) is also getting all traffic flowing through a number of the larger web sites.

This is what I find particularly disturbing:

But James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said the program targets only foreigners. “It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States,”

Which begs the question: what protections are in place to keep it from "unintentionally" getting data from US citizens?  I'm betting on "nothing", personally (though I have no doubt the official answer is, "That's classified; trust us").