Police State, Step 1: Gather All Calls

Well, it’s happening. The NSA has apparently been tracking our telephone calls for the past five years:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

If this turns out to be as bad as it sounds, you can count on the administration and their apologists to throw up the usual smokescreens. They can’t use “we’re only tracking calls to foreign terrorists” anymore, but they’ve still got “protect the nation from evildoers” and “if you’re not doing anything wrong, why worry?” to fall back on. And it’ll probably work, to some extent. I don’t think people realize how precious their privacy is, and how dangerous a government like this can be. It can happen here. It is happening here.

This isn’t all Bush and his cronies, though. It seems to me there are three parties to this outrage: the government, the phone companies, and us. I have nothing but contempt for Verizon, AT&T, and BellSouth, all of whom quickly handed over our phone records when the NSA came calling. Double contempt because they can’t even plead love of country: the USA Today article hints strongly that they were nicely compensated for their “patriotism”.

Nevertheless, we have to acknowledge our culpability here. Because who else but us is going to stop this thing? We can’t expect anything from the administration, obviously. Congress has made itself weak and ineffectual. And we certainly shouldn’t count on the soulless corporations who control our phones to do the right thing (with the notable, and noble, exception of Qwest, who told the NSA to fuck off). That leaves us.

So what do we do? We hit them where it hurts. Find their crotches, don our steel-toed boots, and start kicking. For the government, crotch = ballot box, and thank goodness we still have that crotch available to us. Let’s use it this time, shall we? Mid-term elections are coming up at the end of the year. Time to throw the bums out.

For the phone companies, crotch = pocketbook. I use Verizon for my local and cell calls, AT&T for long-distance. That means that every call I’ve made for the past five years is in an NSA database somewhere, waiting for some twisted Bush-spawned politico to dig it up and use it against me. He’s made several calls to Arabs, your honor! Arabs! Yes, they were his brother and his uncles and his aunts, but nevertheless! The safety of the nation is at stake!

Fuck this. I’m canceling my service with all of these treacherous monopolies. I have to. What other choice is there?

Update: According to the first polls, a majority of Americans (around 66%) are fine with the government tracking their calls. Seems like a quick and dirty survey, and the sample size looks suspiciously small to me, but nevertheless: not great news. Hopefully this changes as the true scale of this thing becomes apparent.