Is that when someone "listens" to your conversations? When they monitor your outbound calls to another known al Qaeda number?
I think the issue is obtaining the contents of communications. In the circumstances we are in, review of contents would seem to be of equal interest on both parties in the communications. That is, all of my outbound calls should be monitored, not just the ones to Al Qaeda, if I am implicated in a terrorist network, and regardless of my citizenship.
The administration holds, I think, that it is reasonable to undertake this interception of contents without obtaining a warrant.
"I think the issue is obtaining the contents of communications."
Well, we don't know that NSA was tracking the content of anyone's communications under this program.
My guess is that they were tracking *connections* in order to build a network diagram of potential al Qaeda operators, and obtaining FISA warrants if further observation was required.
That would be fully within the law.
By the way, when you say "monitored" you don't define what that means.
If you are making outbound calls to international numbers, and those connections (not content) are captured by the NSA downlink in the U.K., that seems to be fully within its legal scope.
But I also think a FISA warrant would be issued against your telephone calls in very short order thereafter.