I Spy...

USAToday printed this morning that the NSA is using three major phone companies to generate lists of phone calls made from Americans to Americans within this country. The government agency claims this is to generate calling patterns within the United States to help fight the war on terror.

In response, the President said in a statement at the White House today, "Our intelligence activities strictly target al-Qaida and their known affiliates. We are not mining or trolling through the personal lives of innocent Americans."

But, on October 17, 2002 General Hayden, the recent CIA Director nominee, made the following statement to members of congress, "I have met personally with prominent corporate executive officers.... And last week we cemented a deal with another corporate giant to jointly develop a system to mine data that helps us learn about our targets."

Is this a reference to the news today about the NSA using records of calls made by Verizon, BellSouth, and AT&T subscribers to collect data on calls? Is somebody lying? Is it legal that the US government is doing anything on such a large scale with our phone records?

I don't like it. The fact that I don't talk about anything illegal over the phone is irrelevant. Is it acceptable that by tracking our calls the country may or may not be safer? Is it also acceptable to say that if everyone were put in jail today that there would be no crime tomorrow? Does that end justify those means? Where does domestic surveillance end and how far do we let our government go with its justification? Can the FBI and the CIA camp outside of your house for a week claiming "war on terror business, sir" yet give you or Congress zero information on why? Even worse, do you feel comfortable paying for all of this?

The Republican agenda hard at work, folks.