If by "us" you're referring to those same 300 million Americans; it isn't.
However if the usage of "us" were a reference to the employment status of 545 political class boobs and their tens of thousands of unelected minions, then you're getting closer to the heart of what all this domestic surveillance is designed to protect, theoretically.
Mom came across some old letters Dad had sent to her aboard a ship before I was born, war time ww2.
Odd to read them as they had been censored with blacked out parts. When one thinks about the number of men serving at the time and the amount of letters written home to think where did the government find enough people to read each one and censor it ???
60's the Subs had this fam gram thing we family could send one a month to the men on the boats.
We had to keep the word count to 30 or so and these were censored so anything negative was blacked out. One friend of mine sent this fam gram, "We are fine ,miss you too, we have survived the Flu."""
What her husband got was, "We are fine, miss you too, we have survived the" That was one confused Chief, was miserable until a month later the next one came in. What had his wife and two kids survived ??
Just a hop skip and a jump from censorship of code words that may block conversations like the beep on TV when some one swears. Naturally the crooks and terrorists will find a way to get around this as we wives worked out ways to get around the censers. It becomes a game to out wit anyone that we find raining on our parade.
