Live from Austin!

As you may have heard, the NSA hopes to create a massive database of every single phone call made in the USA. They approached the big phone companies, and they all handed over data about your phone calls except Qwest. No warrants, no questions, they just gave the information away.

[Update 2 days later: If you think it's no big deal, consider that the government is already illegally tapping journalists' phone lines in an attempt to root out leakers and whistleblowers.]

If that bothers you, you could rant about it online. Or, you could consider doing something more productive: if you haven’t already done so, you could switch your long distance to Working Assets, and tell your old long distance provider why. Working Assets are the only phone company to have joined the ACLU in filing a lawsuit to challenge the spying.

(Also, if you do switch, feel free to give them my number as a referral code.)

John McCain, official apologist for the Republican Party, has apparently decided that he backs Bush’s decision to operate above the law and let the NSA spy on Americans with no warrants or official oversight required.

He just, you know, wants to hear a good reason why Bush needed to ignore the law. Then it’ll all be all right.

You may know that the NSA are not supposed to carry out surveillance against American citizens, as per US Signals Intelligence Directive 18, unless given special permission by the Attorney General.

You may also know that the Supreme Court has ruled that the NSA cannot spy against US citizens. They used to get around this by working with GCHQ in the UK—GCHQ would spy on Americans, the NSA would spy on the English, and they’d exchange data.

Well, the New York Times reports that the Bush administration let the NSA off its leash in 2002. It can now spy on anyone, with no judicial oversight whatsoever.

Americans may wish to read up on the ECHELON network and its capabilities. In the interests of balance, I will point out that ECHELON caught at least one 9/11 terrorist. Whether that’s sufficient to justify the fact that your telephone calls and e-mails are almost certainly all being scanned, is for you to decide.

And cordial greetings to my readers in Fort Meade.