Its is being reported that Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, was questioned with his attorneys present, by investigators presumably from the Department of Justice that is investigating Apple’s backdating of stock options.

Apple took an $84 million charge relating to the issue last quarter and internal company investigators cleared Jobs of any wrong doing, but Department of Justice Investigators are digging further for their own reasons.  Steve Jobs has not admitted to any wrong doing and several senior Apple insiders have left the company, even though they do not admit to any wrong doing either.

The back dating scandal at Apple does not yet seem material compared to Apple’s bottom line, but investigators unlike auditors have to look into the criminal aspect as well.

The uproar today out of Washington comes from the revelation that the NSA has been collecting phone records of every day Americans since shortly after September 11th without anyone’s public knowledge as the event has been highly classified.

ABC Channel 7 in Chicago describes the information provided with the following analogy, “That printout of your phone calls that many Chicago area consumers get each month is the same one that also goes to the government in a database that has charted hundreds of millions of calls. ”

The NSA appears to be working under a potential legal loophole. A court order would be required to allow the NSA to listen to the actual phone conversation, however a court order is not required for them to request phone records.

Reports describe Billions of phone records turned over to the government for “tens of millions” of customers in some reports and “over 200 million” customers in other reports. These are domestic phone bills of US Citizens and businesses.
ABC7Chicago.com: NSA collection of billions of phone records sparks uproar