The Sixth Circuit granted a stay in the NSA surveillance case, ACLU v. NSA. Dan Sewell of the Associated Press has this article, in which he describes the program: "The program monitors international phone calls and e-mails to or from the United States involving people the government suspects have terrorist links." The headline writer (who is usually not the reporter) apparently didn't read the article and captioned it, "Court Temporarily OKs Domestic Spying."
This is a misuse of language worthy of Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty. The words "domestic" and "international" have well established meanings. If you are flying from San Francisco to Tokyo, when you get to SFO do you go to the domestic terminal rather than the international terminal? Not if you want to catch the plane. If your telephone calling plan has a domestic rate and an international rate, and you call from Peoria to Frankfurt, would you expect to get the domestic rate and complain if they charge you the international rate? Good luck. There is a clearly right word and a clearly wrong word here, and yet there is pervasive use of the wrong word by professional wordsmiths who should know better.
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