Thursday, May 11, 2006

"THIS CALL MAY BE MONITORED FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE CONVENIENCE...."
G-d, how bad does it have to get before someone just cans this shmuck from the White House?

Furor over illegal wiretapping seemed to have vanished - as does almost any indignation that Bush puts us through. He's got the power to get people to forget. Or maybe it's just the short attention span of the undereducated american population.

The gov't has been buying kerjillions of call records from landlines and cellphones (personal and business lines) from phone companies. Three in particular: Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth. To be honest, I'm not sure if I'm more upset w/the gov't doing this w/out warrants, just cause, or lack of a soul - or the phone companies for selling out for something that had no court order, just cause or warrant.

Markeplace had a good story (more about the telecoms than anything) tonite - only one company had the gonads to tell the gov't 'no': Qwest. If we had Qwest service here, I'd change over in a second! Apparently the administration berated Qwest for being unpatriotic and then threatening them to pull any gov't contracts. ......so.....who exactly are the unpatriotic ones?

More than 3 to 1 in a CNN poll says that this NSA intrusion makes them feel 'creepy' as opposed to 'more secure'. (honest, 'creepy' was the choice.)

As always, the gov't, their agencies and their watch groups are completely at odds:

  • Michael Hayden - up for CIA director says, "Everything that N.S.A. does is lawful and very carefully done." Did I mention he currently works for the NSA?
  • Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said, "If they don't get a court order, it's a crime."
  • Kennety Bass, former counsel for intelligence policy @ the Justice Department said "The concept of the N.S.A. having near-real-time access to information about every call made in the country is chilling....though probably not illegal"
No one is accountable. Executive-Legislative-Judicial. Remember these? Now they are just headers on areas in DC. They mean nothing.

Oh yeah - and this has been going on since 9/11, but the AG and the NSA says they were 'fully forthcoming'. ....um...........w/whom? If they were, wouldn't the public know about it say.....more than 4.5 yrs after it started?


oh yeah......and W thinks Jeb should be president. What? You didn't see THAT coming???

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