The whole thing is ghastly to me. I may be over reacting as that is the way I feel today but I believe that I see the implications of this illegal invasion into the privacy of so many individuals far reaching.. And on the Right Wing Boards they are applauding the move.
I just cannot comprehend why everything Bush does is thought of as so right on when it is so dangerously a ursurpation of our basic rights... Why do not some people think this through to a logical conclusion. One person posted he was not worried about Bush having this right but when other administrations come to power that might make it wrong.... IMAGINE....
Excerpted:
By these accounts, the computer programs being used by the NSA to analyze the phone call databases it purchased from the big telecommunications companies are a more advanced form of the “social-network analysis” software used by commercial and political marketing firms to profile potential advertising targets. Phone trees are traced to identify nodes and determine common interests and activities among those targeted.
In the case of commercial marketing, the purpose is to identify the best targets to receive a sales pitch. For the intelligence agencies, the purpose is to select targets for more intensive electronic surveillance, or arrest and (perhaps indefinite) detention.
The potential value of this information for purposes of political intimidation is enormous. Every person who has ever telephoned a 900 number, for instance, now has that fact permanently recorded in a government database, making him or her vulnerable to blackmail by federal agents. Likewise those whose phone records suggest problems with gambling, narcotics abuse, or even extramarital affairs.
The FBI regularly used such information for nefarious purposes during the notorious 50-year reign of J. Edgar Hoover, who kept special files on the sexual and other peccadilloes of congressmen and government officials. Now such information will be available on every American citizen.
The sheer size of the database makes the NSA surveillance program unique and truly Orwellian in character. AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, the three telecommunications companies which supplied the data, provided the NSA with the calling records on 224 million land-line and cellular telephone customers, 80 percent of the land-line and 50 percent of the wireless users in the US. According to press reports, the three companies connected 500 billion telephone calls in 2005 alone, and over two trillion since 9/11. Information on all these calls—the number calling, the number dialed, the time and duration—is now in the NSA database, along with historical information of unknown but vast dimensions.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation |
