NSA Has Massive Database on Americans' Phone Calls

[Joker85]

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.

I don't have a problem with this. They are not listening in, only creating a database of where calls are going so that if something occurs they are able to say, this person called/is still calling x other people at y time(s) and use that as the starting point in an investigation.

If you take a flight from Chicago to New York the government knows about it and if something happens 2 years later they can look back and say "this guy flew to New York in 2006, might want to see if anyone he visited there was involved in what he was doing".

If they wanted to listen to these calls (assuming they begin and end in the US, and to not involve a suspected terrorist calling into the US) they would need to go by the legal process.

People certainly have the right to disagree with me on this, but I do not believe it is a right or liberty of mine to be able to make a call to John Smith without the government having the ability to find out that I made a call to a person named John Smith.

[Hurin_Rules]

It should be very disturbing. Again we find the government has gone further than we knew, again we have only the government's assurances that this is legal, is not being abused and is the end of the story. Is personal information about Americans being cross referenced with this database? Who exactly has access to the database? If the NSA hasn't been listening to or recording any of these calls, has any other agency been doing it? You have to parse Bush's words very carefully these days, my friends.

Note also that the Justice Department has now dropped its own investigation into the Domestic Spying Program. The reason? The NSA refused to give its investigators security clearance. Pretty much sums up the lack of oversight in the present administration. Can you imagine such a thing happening in any other business or institution? 'Sure, we've heard about wrongdoing and wanted to investigate, but we can't because those accused of the wrongdoing don't want us to investigate.' Ridiculous. [See the story here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12727867/ ]

I guess the thing that most bothers me-- and it was what most bothered me with the Domestic Spying program-- was, as Leahy summed up today: 'Where does it stop?' Have we heard it all, or is there more to come? Who is watching the watchmen?

[Don Corleone]

Personally, I have limited concerns. I understand what you're saying Hurin, but frankly, at least here in America, your average cop can get phone records for anyone he wants. The NSA is just piling them all together to save themselves the trouble of having to call the phone company... the access, be it through the phone company or accessing their database has always been there. I imagine in 1890, when the first metro phone networks were arranged, the town's operator would more than happily tell the local sheriff who called whom last night, and maybe tell her sister and friends to boot.

Privacy is an illusion. Granted, security is too, but as W (not one of my favorite people these days, mind you) said, "If you're on the phone with Al Queda, we'd like to know why". I don't have too much concern about this. I guarantee that John Kerry would have authorized a similar database had Ohio swung the other way.