Red and Blue getting dangerously close to Blue v. Gray now.

USAToday: NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls

More lies. Metastatic lies. Wholesale. Did we vote for that? Did you? Do we trade freedom for endless Hallmark Card-variety claims to security? Do we trade in our Constitution for a man? Do we blithely ignore the reason the damn thing was so carefully written in the first place?

USAToday tells us it's massive. It's unprecedented. And AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth helped.

Lovely. The people looking to kill net neutrality have been strangling the Bill of Rights to limber up. Their reason--the one Qwest wouldn't fall for? NSA threatened to withhold eligibility for other paid confidential government work. "Other"? You mean this wasn't pro bono? Wait, you weren't thinking Ma Bell was processing, bundling and handing over Petabytes of data for nothing did you? There's a $billion-worth of crass, abject surrender contract-work involved here if there's a dime. Whore is too nice a word.

What does it take to piss you off? Cuz I'm there.

So's Jack Cafferty (via C&L)

We better all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, cause he might be all that stands between us and a full blown dictatorship in this country. He's vowed to question these phone company executives about volunteering to provide the government with my telephone records, and yours, and tens of millions of other Americans.

Shortly after 9/11, AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth began providing the super-secret NSA with information on phone calls of millions of our citizens, all part of the War on Terror, President Bush says. Why don't you go find Osama bin Laden, and seal the country's borders, and start inspecting the containers that come into our ports?

The President rushed out this morning in the wake of this front page story in USA Today and declared the government is doing nothing wrong, and all this is just fine. Is it? Is it legal? Then why did the Justice Department suddenly drop its investigation of the warrantless spying on citizens because the NSA said Justice Department lawyers didn't have the necessary security clearance to do the investigation. Read that sentence again. A secret government agency has told our Justice Department that it's not allowed to investigate it. And the Justice Department just says ok and drops the whole thing. We're in some serious trouble, boys and girls"

USAToday:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

[...]

The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database.

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

Mo' better lies. To those who say "why worry if you've got nothing to hide?" I have bad news. Tom Ridge, to his credit and in response to exactly that lame strawman, said 2 weeks ago at the University of Richmond "That won't wash. Anyone who says that is wrong or stupid. We have a Constitution for just this reason." Bush and Hayden and their apologists say there's no gambling mining going on here--"this is not mining, we are not trolling through the private lives of Americans" And the check's in the mail.

Hayden himself, in a 2002 NSA Public Information Release:

I have met personally with prominent corporate executive officers. (One senior executive confided that the data management needs we outlined to him were larger than any he had previously seen). [...] And last week we cemented a deal with another corporate giant to jointly develop a system to mine data that helps us learn about our targets.

Alexander Graham Bell did a fine thing when he invented the telephone. Did he foresee obscene callers and dinner-time tele-pitches for aluminum siding? "Product," as they call it in the intel business seeks customers and uses. It calls to politicians and practitioners: "Use me, leverage me." In my experience, in the security business, the siren song is often most audible and alluring to those with a blind spot for the ethical edges. Since 2002 (offically and by law) your cell phone plots your daily movements with accuracy close to that of GPS. The three major credit reporting agencies know far more than your credit history. Your "Valued Customer Cards" feed a pile that can pinpoint your moods, tastes, vices and healthrisk. Your medical, legal and employment records are secret or difficult to obtain mostly only to you. And the song remains the same. The mission creeps, Pandora is unboxed. Eventually. Always.

The only irony is those who talk most about bravery turn out to be cowards; sissies who've wet their pants and folded their so-called "don't tread on me" ideals like a cheap card table. Actually, that's not irony, it's the pattern, predictabilty guaranteed. It's the history of those who paint their soapboxes with stars and stripes: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Once, they may even have taken pride sternly quoting Franklin as they railed against some "Nanny State" outrage--They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.

We're past politics and now into pathology. A very dangerous space. Cafferty's correct, We're in some serious trouble, boys and girls, and yet Gallup tells us 30% of America still seems intent on selling it's common soul for a cultish, craven one. Well, I'm keeping mine, and probably losing several friends and in-laws before this is through.