Revealed: What the NSA is doing with your phone records

It's a database.

USA Today reported Thursday that the NSA has three major phone companies under contract to provide data on phone numbers called within the United States.

"The agency's goal is 'to create a database of every call ever made' within the nation's borders," the paper reported.

So that's it.

That's why they won't seek warrants for what they're doing. They're compiling all the information they can possibly get and one day, when they have evidence that somebody did something worth investigating, they will go to a judge and get a warrant (or not) and pull everything connected to every phone number that person ever called, and everything connected to every phone number that was ever used to call that person.

That's very different than getting a warrant based on probable cause, as required by the Fourth Amendment, and then collecting data on a person's phone calls and contacts.

Whether the NSA's program is legal is a question that can't be answered, because the administration refuses to tell a court anything about it. We only know as much as we know because reporters at the New York Times and USA Today dug it out by talking to people who clearly are uncomfortable about the program.

Even if the NSA program is legal, we have it in our power to amend the Constitution so that it isn't. The question for us, then, is this: Should we allow the federal government to collect, in secret, information on innocent Americans that can be analyzed later when someone is suspected of a crime?

Of course not.

The potential for abuse is enormous. People in the administration could dig for dirt on protesters and political opponents and businesses that lobby against the president's proposals. And they could do this in absolute secrecy. Laws intended to protect the national security of the United States would instead protect dirty tricks, blackmail and intimidation.

It's not as if phone records can't be obtained any other way. If the government gets a warrant, they can get their hands on detailed phone records of past calls as well as authorization to wiretap current calls.

What about the argument that warrants take too long and terrorists act too quickly?

Well, to accept that argument you would have to believe that the federal government can analyze the information they're collecting and accurately target terrorist plots in time to stop them.

There is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that this is not the case.

For instance, the government relied on erroneous information in a law enforcement database in the infamous Ruby Ridge case, when FBI snipers were told that an armed and dangerous man was lurking behind the door of a cabin. They fired, and hit a woman holding a baby.

The government acted on erroneous information in Waco, Texas, when law enforcement personnel attacked and accidentally incinerated a house full of cult members because they were told that cult leader David Koresh was molesting children.

The government's FBI profilers thought the Washington-area snipers were two white guys in a pick-up truck when in fact they were two black guys in a Chevy.

The government ruined the lives of Richard Jewell and Stephen Hatfill by leaking that they were "persons of interest" in the Atlanta Olympics bombing and the anthrax letters, respectively, when both men were absolutely innocent.

Of course, sometimes the government's information is accurate. A timely memo from an FBI field office warned that terrorists were learning to fly planes in U.S. flight schools. When the government has information on terrorists and chooses to ignore it, does it solve the problem to let them track your phone calls?

We should be very, very cautious about allowing the federal government to collect information on Americans who are not suspected of any crime. In fact, we should be more than cautious.

We should be outraged.


Copyright 2006


.