Why would the government seek and store records of every telephone
call to your doctor, your lawyer, your next door neighbor?
Tell us.
From a Chicago Tribune editorial, 5/11/06:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-060511nsa-editorial,0,2573338.story?coll=chi-homepagepromo440-fea
TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
The NSA has your number
This sounds like a vast and unchecked intrusion on privacy
The National Security Agency has been amassing a vast, secret database
with records of tens of millions of telephone calls made by Americans,
USA Today reported on Thursday.
Telephone companies started to turn over records of millions of their
customers' phone calls not long after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks.
The government has created the largest database ever assembled,
according to an anonymous source quoted by the newspaper.
The government apparently has even bigger plans "to create a database
of every call ever made within the nation's borders" to identify and
track suspected terrorists.
Think about that.
Every phone call ever made.
No, not so fast.
This sounds like a vast and unchecked intrusion on privacy.
President Bush's assurance Thursday that the privacy of Americans was
being "fiercely protected" was not at all convincing.
We need to know more about this.
The government, though, didn't offer confirmation or elaboration on
Thursday.
Based on the newspaper's reporting, this effort appears to go far
beyond any surveillance effort that would be targeted at terrorist
operations.
At first blush this program carries troubling echoes of Total
Information Awareness, a proposed Defense Department "data-mining"
expedition into a mass of personal information on individuals'
driver's licenses, passports, credit card purchases, car rentals,
medical prescriptions, banking transactions and more.
That was curbed by Congress after a public outcry.
It seems the people who wanted to bring you TIA didn't get the
message.
This program seems to be far broader than the NSA surveillance of
communications between the U.S. and overseas, which prompted great
concern when it was revealed last December.
Though that program is more intrusive-it involves eavesdropping on
conversations-it is at least focused on communications between people
in the U.S. and people abroad who are suspected of being connected to
terrorism.
That overseas surveillance effort, this page has argued, could be
justified and extended if it included some modest judicial oversight.
But this vast mining of domestic phone records -- this is something
else.
Alarmed members of Congress demanded answers on Thursday. Sen. Arlen
Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he
would summon the phone companies providing the information-AT&T,
Verizon, and BellSouth-for a hearing.
``We're really flying blind on the subject [of domestic surveillance]
and that's not a good way to approach the Fourth Amendment and the
constitutional issues involving privacy,'' Specter said.
Yes, we're flying blind.
Why would the government seek and store records of every telephone
call to your doctor, your lawyer, your next door neighbor?
Tell us.
________________________________________________________
OK, rightards, your answer is.........................................
Harry
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