Thursday, May 11, 2006

the NSA has all our Phone Records

Yup. There is a database at the NSA where they can simply type in a phone number (or I assume a name) and all the calls to and from that person are listed. This was reported in USA Today yesterday. I was reading a few weeks ago (and now I'm really pissed that I didn't link to it) a piece written by an ex-network technician at AT&T (it may have been another phone network, but it doesn't matter) who talked about the NSA taking over a room in the switching center and having all the fiber lines routed through it (ostensibly to tap all the calls). (update.. I found the piece! here)

You can't tell me that you don't care. You can't tell me that it's for our own good. You can't tell me that the scale isn't bigger than what is being reported. You can't convince me that "tens of millions of Americans are involved with al Qaeda" (in my paraphrased quote of Senator Leahy from this piece.

Our privacy is gone, and not in a "well giving up some privacy adds convenience to my life" tech way. It's gone in an evil Big Brother kind of way and nobody seems to care. Sure you and I care. Sure the 5% of America that actually votes cares, but the rest of us either don't care or accept what the govt. tells them because it's easier than getting stressed out.

Your vote isn't as important as the vote of 10 of your friends. Write 10 of your friends and compel them to vote next week and in the general election. Compel them to do the same to 10 of their friends. People, we need to increase turnout, we need to vote, we need to make the government work for us and not the other way around!

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