[jonknee]

I think "as you type" means different things to an intelligence officer and a programmer. The intelligence officer probably means "real time" (no need for a judge/approval/etc). A Google Wave like interface is probably not in the backend, but if the FISA route took weeks and the new kit takes seconds I could see "literally as you type" being a description that fits.

[danso]

Yes...maybe I reacted too strongly to the often misused "literally."

But even real-time interception would not (seemingly) be that valuable to analysts. Assuming that suspects aren't dumb enough to use their own personal accounts and to talk of their plans explicitly, it seems analysts would want the historical aggregate of which alias accounts talked to which other alias accounts.

Hell, Facebook can already figure out if you're connected to someone even if you've never directly interacted on the service...if the allegations are true, I wonder how much of the requested data comes with pre-baked network-calculated goodness?

[jonknee]

Obviously all conjecture here, but what came to mind for me is things like having a keyword filter on a bunch of accounts (whoever you're watching). The moment they Google for something you want to see you get an alert that it happened.

[Terretta]

"Literally watch ideas form" would be some amazing brain scan tech. Since the context was Google searches, we can discount the literalness.