NSA's phone call data collection goes too far

Bold mining
NSA's phone call data collection goes too far

They call it data mining. We call it frightening. USA Today reports that the National Security Agency has been tracking the phone calls of "tens of millions of Americans." And you ask ... why? "To analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity," USA Today was told.

AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth have been complicit in this agreement. To its credit, Qwest refused to be part of it. With the cooperation of the others, the NSA has been able to compile the largest database in the world, the paper was told.

Last year President Bush admitted that the NSA was eavesdropping on international calls. He felt that doing it without warrants was justified. After all, it was a necessary weapon in the war on terror (which is the default excuse for a lot of stepping over U.S. law these days).

Do we have any evidence that this record keeping has been successful in stopping any terror attacks yet? That's a lot of excess information gathered that the government will probably never need. If the war on terror ends tomorrow, what would become of the records of Aunt Betty's calls to the psychic hotline or a scared teen's anonymous calls to an AIDS clinic? Will they be discarded or saved for future use?

In discussing the revelation by USA Today, Bush said Thursday that "The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval." Can we (or should we) believe him in light of his candor about the warrant-less wiretapping?

Yes, we need to keep an eye on terrorist activity, but this form of data mining is excessive.

You may have never thought of Ma Bell as Big Brother. You might want to think again.