With Liberty and Scrutiny for All (Detroit Free Press)

[kurth]

Detroit Free Press / May 12, 2006
With Liberty and Scrutiny for All
Database of phone calls has massive reach

Might as well just assume that every move you make, every step you take, every call you place, they'll be watching you. So conduct yourself accordingly.

They is the National Security Agency, or "no such agency" as the top-secret NSA is often described in Washington. USA Today reported Thursday that the NSA, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has since 2001 been gathering data on every phone call made in the United States, looking for patterns that might signal terrorist activity. This is a different NSA program from the agency's acknowledged monitoring of international calls and e-mails in search of terrorist connections. The domestic program, which is amassing what one unnamed official described to USA Today as "the largest database ever assembled in the world," involves tracking which numbers are calling which numbers, when and how often. Only the NSA, presumably, knows what sorts of calling patterns might signal a threat to the nation as opposed to, say, a particularly devoted couple or a radio station's contest line.

A harmless precaution that poses no threat to innocent people? Perhaps. But that requires other presumptions -- that the NSA knows what it's looking for in all these calls and that all this data is never going to fall into the wrong hands and be misused. Also, the NSA cannot move to the next level, actual eavesdropping, without a warrant. But such warrants, again presumably, would have to be requested on the basis of this unwarranted number-to-number monitoring.

President George W. Bush, who has authorized the NSA's warrantless eavesdropping on international calls, said Thursday that "the privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities. Our efforts are focused on al Qaeda and their known associates." Americans will want to be careful then not to punch in a wrong number. Who knows what the consequences might be? The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures." Nothing about telephones so you'd better just assume ... and conduct yourself accordingly.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060512/OPINION01/605120341/1068/OPINION

[Dunvegan]

1. Not only don't accidentally call the "wrong" wrong number...

...make sure you never get a "wrong" wrong number call.

There. Now that should make all of our lives dead easy.