NSA--Like a Black Box

Nothing that Bush says adds up about the NSA affair. Like a "Black Box" in a physics lab you can tell a lot by just a few knowns. We know that "eavesdropping" went on without using warrants. If there were just a "few" Al Qaeda involved why not get warrants--before or after doing the eavesdropping? Using secret methods or technology would not have prevented that, for the Courts are not interested in the technology of how the government wiretaps.
Just a "few" terrorists doesn't seem plausible either--not over a period of several years. So then it is more likely that a "few" suspects were wire-tapped. How many is more than a few? If much more than a few we are getting into wide-spread infringements on our privacy, and that would be difficult to get warrants for.
So what are the numbers? The numbers are important for they would tell us just how "legal" the program was. Large numbers would mean an "infringement of our Constitutional rights", low numbers would place the whole issue in a gray area. I deduce from what facts are known that the numbers are large.
The administration in any case will try to "fudge" the numbers, by pointing to the number of suspects "found" and ignoring the large number of people that were "scanned" to derive the smaller number of "suspects". In other words the administration will lie about the numbers involved.
If, as I suspect, large numbers of citizens were "screened" others than the government would be involved--communications companies like AT&T etc. Anyone with radio equipment can listen to communications sent through the air but communications sent over land-lines can only be intercepted by technical means; i.e., high-tech wire-tapping. A good technician could do that on a few people but for the numbers likely involved here only a telecommunications company could do so.
If the government colluded with American companies to use their equipment to eavesdrop on American citizens that would clearly be an infringement of civil liberties, an infringement of the Fourth Amendment. That is tantamount to doing block searches of peoples homes without a clear cause. Something the FISA court would not tolerate, which is probably why no warrants were requested.
If we are to sustain our Democracy, as envisioned by our Founding Fathers, the people must not give into arguments that would abrogate our freedoms and weaken our laws.