This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, June 17th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

It's not just telephony metadata.

The NSA has been collecting Internet metadata, far more sensitive information,

has been collected more broadly than previously thought.

Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute's comments.

So the Washington Post reported Saturday confirming I think what everyone suspected

which is that the NSA has not just been gathering telephone call

metadata but also at least for several years immediately after 9-11 even

without court orders gathered vast amounts of internet metadata as well.

We now know that it was this and not actually the phone call database that nearly

prompted the resignation of acting attorney general James

Komi, FBI director Robert Mueller and basically a top tier of Justice

Department lawyers and we know it was now

Internet metadata that they found so controversial

and that after the end of that warrantless program,

they continued to get under authorities issued directly by the secret FISA court.

Now why you might wonder would internet metadata provoke so much more controversy than phone metadata.

And I think if you think about the way we use the internet,

it becomes clear that it is sensitive

as a record of phone calls is.

It can reveal things like who's called a suicide hotline or a substance abuse

...