The USA Today reported today that the United States NSA has been keeping a database of all phone calls made inside the country domestically. The contents of the calls have not been stored, just the phone numbers on either side of the connection. While Bush has "assured" us that the NSA has not been mining data to intrude on the private lives of Americans, that seems like little comfort to me when the NSA answers to just about no one.

I was able to go as far as the NSA wiretap program which professed to only deal with telephone calls where one end of the connection originated outside the country. If terrorists are making calls to anyone in this country, our intelligence agencies should know. However, this latest program, crosses a line that I cannot defend. Under no circumstances should our government be collecting phone logs and trying to determine patterns to "help fight the war on terrorism." It’s smacks too much of "1984", and to give it a more modern spin, "V for Vendetta - The Movie".

Of course, the program is a typical Washington politician program. Don’t think voting Democrat will suddenly give you back your privacy. Don’t forget the mass amounts of wiretaps the Clinton adminstration used to fight the "War on Drugs", or how the Clinton adminstration also used Echelon to spy on citizens. Even beyond the two parties, don’t forget that the United States and England routinely spy on each other and pass along the information to get around most spying laws. No, the solution to programs like this NSA phone database, requires new politicians, not just a new party in power.

Our government is so big and inefficient, all it can think to do, is collect more and more information, run it through Microsoft Excel and read the tea leaves to try and find Bin Laden. Intead of focusing on HUMINT, our government is now obesessed with information collection on the populace of 300 million, to root out a few hundred terrorists that may or may not be in this country.

We need a need new vision, new leadership, and a new generation of people to get involved in government. The current Congress is considering legislation to ban MySpace in libraries, restrict instant messaging, and eliminate "net nutrality. They have no clue how to do anything but form committee upon commitee, and get nothing done.

Why are our ports still not secured? Why are our borders not secured? Why have we spent over six months trying to figure out why Katrina went wrong without a single concrete plan? Why do we still not have adequate screening at airports?

The nasty truth is that our federal government doesn’t know how to do anything right anymore. Whose fault is this? Ours. We’re the ones who vote in these people, and we’re the ones not holding them accountable. Instread of voting for people who will conduct themselves responsibily and admirably in government, we vote for who panders to us the most, who promises the most dollars back in our pocket, and who sounds like, shucks, they really know us.

I’m just tired of being embarassed for this country every time I turn on the television and have to hear Bush fumble through his words, Schumer lie through his teeth, Kennedy speak, and any god bagger Republican from the South go on and on about the evils of gay marriage. I have never registered for a political party, and I never will as long as I live. I’m looking for a credible third party. The time is right, and the country is ready. All it will take is, as Stephen Colbert would say, some balls, America.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 11th, 2006 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Current Events, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.