Shhhhh, the government is listening...

We are "not mining or trolling through the
personal lives of millions of innocent Americans"
George W. Bush, May 10, 2006 on the release of
telephone records to the NSA.

So they don't care that your talking to your hairdresser, or that your best friends mothers brother passed away...Their looking for terrorists. But their listening to you in the mean time...just in case.

Ok, well there have been jokes that the government is listening, but now, they are fessing up, they really are. It's not really a joke, haha, Big Brother is really there, on the phone lines, listening to you talk about your best friends mothers brother.

Specificially:

...Last month, a former AT&T technician said in a sealed court document filed in federal court that the company cooperated with NSA to install equipment for "vacuum cleaner surveillance" of e-mail messages and Internet traffic, according to his lawyer.

Attorney Miles Ehrlich of Berkeley, California, told CNN that his client, Mark Klein, said there is a special room inside an AT&T building in San Francisco that is entirely controlled by NSA personnel and contains equipment that can sift through large amounts of Internet traffic.

But the article also quotes that the NSA says ...

"Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide.

"However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."

So maybe it isn't "illegal" per-se, but is it permissable? Where did we ever sign off on saying it was ok for our calls and e-mails to be monitored and watched? This is not ok and should not be tolerated. Even if it's to look for terrorists, it's still not ok. Are we losing control of OUR Government who, like a vouyer, listens to what we talk and write about? Shame on the phone companies who bowed to the pressure of the NSA. I never said it was ok for them to listen to me. I once worked for a telco company and it was a HUGE deal when someone would monitor a line. A HUGE DEAL. So who decideds now that they can fish through our records? Who decides who is a terrorist or not? This is not tolerable.

I think i'll send this to my Senator and Congress person too. Lets see if I get a response.

Bush | NSA | ATT | Verizon | Qwest | telephone