And not to mention the FBI has extensive tapping/eavsdropping programs of it's own, which it could also share the other way with the NSA. All enforcement branches have their own massive data collection and mining programs with the intent of "snooping". Carnivore was one of the FBI's programs that made some headlines a few years ago. It's in the same vein as the NSA/PRISM outrage going on now, except there wasn't any outrage over it at the time really, it still made a lot of headlines. Carnivore, after it made headlines, had it's name changed and went further underground to difuse some of the negative press it was getting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software) Was later changed (or replaced with) to:passing anything interesting it finds along to the FBI.