Cape Karen
It just doesn't stop! Now, thanks to good reporting by USATODAY, we've discovered that Mr. Bush, again without going through the proper legal channels, has been allowing the NSA to secretly collect our phone numbers and e-mail addresses from Bellsouth, AT & T. and Verizon since 2001. First, it was the international wire-tapping, now it's our domestic phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Seems they've been entered into a massive computer program, to try and find suspicious "patterns" ~ {supposedly} to try and track down the terrorists who are residing in this country. Gathering Auntie Bee's phone records and Grandma Smith's calls to her 10 grandchildren around the country, must make for some time-consuming analysis! Qwest Communications was the only company that refused to give up its private customer information to the powers that be. They were the only company concerned enough about our right to privacy that they dared to question and challenge the legality of such a move. (Go Qwest!)
I have an unlisted phone number with Bellsouth, and yet my "unlisted" number is posted boldly on the top of every bill that I receive from them. I thought that was pretty stupid, but this kind of secret data gathering is just plain wrong! The abuse of power we have witnessed, since the attacks on 9-11, have stretched constitutional law to such a degree that we all need to be seriously alarmed. The on-going claim, that this is being done to try to track down terrorists and to "protect us," is wearing really thin. And, that many American's are reported to be supporting this illegal behavior, on the basis of that untruth, is as foolish as when they also believed the claims about 'weapons of mass destruction' being stored in Iraq. Hopefully, in the days and weeks ahead, those who support such measures will come to understand the deeper implications of this blatant abuse of Presidential power and those poll results will change. (Smarten-up America!)
The really scary thing was realizing that Congress only learned of this secret data collecting by reading USATODAY! When a newspaper knows more about what's going on in D.C. than the members of Congress, how frightening is that? As the 'overseers' of our Constitutional rights and protections, our Congressional leaders have been failing us miserably. (Talk about a "wake-up" call!) It seems that Big Brother Bush is holding us all hostage to his fears and his ever-growing paranoia. (He reminds me of a former, too powerful, FBI director who secretly collected all kinds of personal information on innocent Americans a few years back; and more recently, a CIA director who did the same.)
Will we learn next that our private medical records are being secretly scoured and stored in the Big Computer in D.C.? Will they begin collecting our grocery store receipts to see who is buying ingredients for creating foreign recipes? How about collecting receipts from all the hardware stores in the country to see who's buying potential bomb-making supplies? How about our library cards to see what we are reading? Where will it all stop?
Of course it isn't a bad thing to want to track terrorist activities, or to try and keep the American public safe. But, it is a bad thing to steal our personal records and to go through other personal information without first asking or informing us. We have a long-standing constitutional system that was set-up to provide checks and balances, so that a 'rogue President' can't use his power of office to run roughshod over our rights. The audacity and arrogance that lie beneath this latest attack on our freedoms, by a sitting President no less, is unheralded in our country's history. Even Nixon's Watergate scandal is beginning to pale in comparison to what's going on these days up on the Hill. It's as if a bunch of thugs were sent into our homes, to steal our personal information in the middle of the night. In this case, the "thugs" were the compliant phone companies, who were too easily convinced to do the dirty work. (Shame on them!)
And, just the day before this news hit the wires, Mr. Bush was televised meeting with some people who have had their identities stolen viá credit card. His pretense at being outraged, about how their lives were negatively impacted by such a theft, seems rather phoney now, doesn't it? Just the fact that he could sit there with a straight face, and pretend to give a damn about their 'loss of privacy' and the suffering it caused them, is a measure of the man's true character.
It would behoove all of us to demand that he and the NSA 'cease and desist' with these increasingly secretive actions against the rights of law-abiding American citizens. I'd like to see us stand tall and make public statements about how outraged we are. Write a letter, make a phone call, (they will listen to it later on the tapes) write to the editor of your local newpaper. Do something! To do nothing, or to believe it was done in 'our best interests,' is to condone such illegal actions, and to invite more of the same in the future.
The search for unseen, radical terrorists is certainly not an easy one; and we all understand that. I'm sure, if we had been asked, many of us would have readily agreed to do whatever needed to be done to help our country in this difficult endeavor. But, we were never asked. We were never given the opportunity to volunteer our assistance, or to willingly give them our phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Instead, our unalienable right to privacy, as outlined in the 4th Amendment of our Constitution, was breached with the full consent of our President.
From the Washington Post today come these words:
"AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth secretly provided records of tens of millions of customers' phone calls and e-mails to the National Security Agency. The USATODAY newspaper cited people with direct knowledge of the arrangement, and quoted one anonymous source as saying that, "thanks to the phone companies, the NSA now possesses the largest database {of private citizen information} ever assembled in the world."
In a brief statement at the White House, President Bush simply insisted that "we're not mining or trolling through though the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans." He said that the NSA's programs are lawful, and that the privacy of ordinary Americans is "fiercely protected in all our activities." Privacy lawyers and consumer advocates say otherwise. Moreover, they say the phone companies appear to have violated not only their own privacy policies, but also federal statutes governing the protection of customers' personal data. "They haven't just the violated the law once with this disclosure," said Barry Steinhardt, who oversees privacy matters at the American Civil Liberties Union. "They've violated it millions and millions of times. This is a mass crime."
Thank goodness we have the right to free speech!
Maybe now would be a good a time to start exercising it . . . while we still can.
And, let's don't forget to watch the President's Nationwide Address this Monday night. (He 'bumped' Oprah's "Legend's Ball," right off the airways, so it better be good!)
I'll be listening . . . very carefully.