are our phone calls and text messages being checked by the government?

[Mitzy]

i was just wondering because my friend just sent me a text with the president's name and the word bomb together haha

[Kat Cling]

they can if they want to
peoples jobs are to sit around listening to phone calls all day long

[Feral 57]

For the most part no. Unless you are communicating with less than upstanding members of society your reasonably safe from government eves dropping. However Twitter, face book and your cell phone company keep meticulous records of your conversations, emails and txt's.

I find that people who are worried about some GS-7 cubicle rat spying on them are wildly narcissistic and or paranoid. After all what are you doing that is so important that the government hast to know your every move and are willing to spend time and money on it to find out?

Of course if you really are up to no good then you really are not paranoid are you? They may be out to get you in that instance.

The reality is that the grocery store, Google, and Itunes do more spying on you than Uncle Sam will ever care to do unless you decide that you want to make your presence known to the Fed's by engaging in, lets call it questionable behavior.

[rajeevsarita]

As far as I know this is a common practice by all government machinery like police, criminal department, politician and bureaucrats do for their opposition party /enemy.
However for an individual if they would like to trace that is also possible.
If you know President Nixon has to resign for "Watergate scandal" during his president Nixon tenure.

The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Effects of the scandal eventually led to the resignation of the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, on August 9, 1974, the only resignation of any U.S. President. It also resulted in the indictment, trial, conviction and incarceration of several Nixon administration officials.

[Jesus Christ]

They can if they want to. But obviously not every single one. Usually they have better people to monitor than teenage girls. But I wouldn't be surprised if you're friends message was checked, seeing it had bomb and obama in it.

[Ash Housewares]

No. It is physically impossible to monitor every phone call and text message across the world. Example in the U.S. where the population is roughly 300 million, with almost as many cell phones out there. There are only 800.000 police officers in the U.S. most of whom who spend all day responding to 911 calls. So you figure that leaves let's say 10% of LE monitoring phone calls (actually it is closer to .5% of LE who work intelligence) that means 8000 people monitoring the phone calls of 300 million people 24/7 in multiple different languages. Have you ever met a person who monitors phone calls for a living? Well you should have met some by now.

BTW having worked in LE intel, I can assure you the government is not as big or as all powerful as the conspiracy nut jobs think