Question about NSA procedures

I really didn't know where to put this so here gos. I had a conversation with my sister not to long ago and she works for the government at the SBA. I have just recently graduated from a healthcare school and was asking her because she is a lawyer about backround checks a hospital might do. I was arrested when I was 17 for a roach or 2/10 of gram of weed and have never been arrested since. I am 26 now but it is still on my record. While talking I said it's not like I tried to assinate the president I was caught with roach who gives sh@t.

Here is the question. I watched a program on the history channel about NSA's echelon project. I am familiar with it already but something came to my mind. I guaruntee you assinate the president is in there dictionary of words to listen for. If they have never been monitoring me before and the phrase I said was at the last 30 seconds of a 5 minute conversation. How can they go back and listen to what I said before? I don't want to be seen as a terrorist or have them put more surveillence on me, so is there some kind of recorder for phone conversations they have, or do they go to some phone company and say give me a transcript of this person's phone call.

When I was working for DHS about 7 years ago, one of the guys who worked in the TSA was an retired analyst for the NSA.( And yes I have seens his paperwork with his GS rating) From what I gathered from our talks was that phrases and words are flagged nothing more however if the same or a number of other flagged words or phrases are seen from a particular phone number or IP address then it would be kicked for further looking into. Thats as far as he would get into it, probably outside of his classification.

It's all about backlogging.

just record everything, they have the biggest data centers in the world that can tap into all lines and servers.

if there are no keyphrases stuff gets deleted after a while.

They can't save the whole digital world for years, just the pieces they find interesting.

I wouldn't worry about it. They know who you are and that you were just making a joke. The NSA is truely the only gov't agency with a sense of humor. The tone of your voice was also a giveaway to them. If the gov't will put felons to work in the WH and hospitals have addicted DRs, they figure any hospital would be glad to have you.