X-Tra Rant

via AmericaBlog, a transcript of CNN’s Jack Cafertyon the USA Today story that the NSA, at the behest of the Bush Administration, has been collecting a giant database of the domestic phone calls in this country - twisting the arms of at&t and Verizon to give them their databases without a warrant.

CNN’s WOLF BLITZER: …[some wisdom] from Jack Cafferty in New York.CNN’s JACK CAFFERTY: I don’t know about wisdom but you’ll get a bit of outrage. We better hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that’s standing between us and a full blown dictatorship in this country. He’s vowed to question these phone company executives about volunteering to provide the government with my telephone records and
yours, and tens of millions of other Americans.

Shortly after 9-11, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth began providing the super secret NSA with information on phone calls of millions of our citizens, all part of the war on terror, President Bush says.

Why don’t you go find Osama Bin Laden and seal the country’s borders and start inspecting the containers that come into our ports?

The President rushed out this morning in the wake of this front page story in USA Today and he declared the government’s doing nothing wrong and all of this is just fine.

Is it? Is it legal?

Then why did the Justice Department suddenly drop its investigation of the warrantless spying on citizens? Because the NSA said Justice Department lawyers didn’t have the necessary security clearance to do the investigation.

Read that sentence again.

A secret government agency has told our Justice Department that it’s not allowed to investigate it. And the Justice Department just says okay and drops the whole thing.

We’re in some serious trouble here boys and girls.

Here’s the question.

“Does it concern you that your phone company may be voluntarily providing your phone records to the government without your knowledge or permission?”

If it doesn’t it sure as hell ought to.

(emphasis added)

There’s been a ton of good coverage on The Internets about this issue, so I won’t go into it in depth and bore you with my hacktacularness.
ars technica the real scope of the domestic spying
Crooked Timber wanting to know everything/social network analysis
Daily Kos 10 reasons Americans should worry about this
MyDD Reward Qwest for not bowing to the NSA’s illegal request
Think Progress Telcos could be liable for billions of dollars

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Technorati Tags: nsa, wiretapping, domestic spying, total information awareness, topsail