Another NSA program.

By now, although I never got a chance to blog about it, I'm sure we've all heard about the second NSA program, this time the one that is illegally collecting a massive database of all telephone calls made by everyone in the country (or at least everyone except QWEST customers, since QWEST recognized that the law strictly prohibited them from giving out that information without a court warrant).

So many little aspects of this, it's amazing anyone still seriously believes that President Bush is honoring his oath to uphold the Constitution (you know, the one he took both times he was sworn into office?)

How scary is it that the first program is what we got AFTER the NSA pushed back. Cheney and Bush reportedly argued for domestic wiretapping in the early days of the program, and NSA lawyers came back and told them it simply wasn't legal, so they SETTLED for only international calls.

Or that when QWEST pushed back on the second program, and asked why the NSA didn't get a warrant from the FISA court, they were essentially told that the NSA didn't want to go that route, essentially because the FISA court might say no. What a revolutionary idea, the next time I want to do maintenance on my house that I'm not sure is within the zoning laws, I'll simply not ask first!

And then there's former NSA employee Russell Tice, who reportedly says that he has testimony for Congress about aspects of NSA behavior that we haven't heard of, that NSA employees know is blatantly illegal, but is going on anyway.

There's the fact that the Department of Justice late last week rolled up their investigation of the whole matter, after the NSA denied Justice Dept lawyers security clearance sufficient to let them (the lawyers) review information on the program. Excuse me? Does anyone else see an inherent flaw in the system, when the NSA gets to evade oversight by simply refusing to grant security clearance to the overseeers?

And today, there's news from ABC that their phone records are being scrutinized in an effort to identify leakers of classified information. Now, they say right in the article that they aren't sure whether this is being undertaken under the second NSA program or whether there are warrants for the information, but let's just review some things we know about this Administration:

1. They appear to believe that anything they do is legal, since they are headed by the President.
2. They appear to believe that invoking the phrase "September the 11th" justifies anything they want to do.
3. They have no qualms about releasing sensitive information (see Valerie Plame) on political opponents if it suits their needs.

These are not people who should have a massive database of our telephone calls in hand. Who among us has never made a telephone call they would rather remained private? Statistics state that 30-50% of married people have an affair at some point in their lives. If you're one of them, did you call your affair regularly when your spouse wasn't home? Lots of people make calls they'd want to remain private relating to drug use (calling a supplier, or frequent calls to Narcotics Anonymous), alcoholism (AA), gambling addiction (Gambler's Anonymous) etc.

When, in this country, did we give up the right to speak out against the government? And if we haven't, is it really fair that, in the process of writing this blog, the White House could attempt to discredit me by leaking some of my more embarrassing call history (which I'm not going to detail here, but as an entirely hypothetical, suppose I make a habit of calling phone sex lines, or have a long history of calls to suicide hot lines, or make regular calls to a local club for cross-dressing enthusiasts). Should my ability to speak out against what I perceive to be the wrong-doings of our Government be hampered by the threat that someone will sift through this large, apparently illegal database of calls, find the 10 most publicly embarrassing calls, and release them to the public? And is it right that the best reason I don't have to fear such exposure is simply because there are probably a total of 10 of you out there who will ever read these words?

It's not just THAT they're doing these things, it's that they're doing them almost entirely without oversight or legal authorization, which just increases the chance that someone may put this database to further illegal use in the manner I have described.

We, as a nation, need to wake up and recognize that we don't have civil liberties to protect the terrorists, we have civil liberties to protect OURSELVES. Don't fall for the fallacious argument that you have nothing to fear if you are not a terrorist. Just because terrorism is the justification for the program doesn't mean that it won't ever be used for other purposes, or that those of us who are not terrorists therefore have nothing to fear.

Liam.