I've rigged my plumbing with tinfoil, because damn it all to hell, Karl Rove has no right to know that I'm lactose intolerant.
Posted on 05/14/2006 6:09:13 PM PDT by rhema
Every time there is a new revelation about the government listening to private phone calls, or simply keeping track of phone numbers or mapping calling patterns, we are sure to be told one thing.
Our privacy has not been invaded.
Now, after reading the latest stories about the National Security Agency collecting billions of telephone numbers, I think I know why our privacy has not been invaded. We have no privacy. If we have no privacy, it cannot be invaded.
Privacy, if by privacy we mean our ability to keep our distance from our government, would mean that you cannot be found or talked to or found out about, which would mean that the last time an American citizen had privacy was about 1850.
What has distinguished America from other countries is that the information gathered by the government has for the most part not been used against us. We have a growing epidemic of identity theft that takes care of that. If I called an antique motorboat restoration shop seven times in one day — using the downstairs telephone, if you know what I mean — and the next day there was a guy in a black suit standing at the door, and I noticed the little ear piece and the coiled wire running down the back of his neck and he said, "Does your wife know about this boat?'' I would suddenly mourn the loss of my privacy.
But that doesn't happen, and there is no reasonable assumption that it might. There is nothing to be gained by the government planting itself between me and the CP [Chief Procurer: wife] over a boat.
As near as I can understand it, the NSA, with the cooperation of most of the major telephone companies, has been provided the records of billions of telephone numbers from which, apparently, they can use computer programs to discern patterns of calls that might be troubling. If I keep calling a suspected terrorist in Pakistan, and the guy in Pakistan calls somebody in Omaha, and the guy in Omaha eventually gets back to me, they are probably looking at that.
I guess. I think. How the hell do I know?
Or they are lying to me and they are bent only on one thing: prying into my life and wondering whom I am talking to. But that doesn't seem reasonable to conclude. They already have Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, property tax ID numbers, IRS records, employee information, mortgage account numbers, health insurance information, driver's licenses, criminal records, military records … the list is endless. I have a buddy here at the paper who every Monday can tell me what I shot in golf over the weekend and needle me about my handicap number.
We have no privacy.
What do we do about that? Authors have wrestled with it for years. The two who have most concerned themselves in popular fiction are John D. MacDonald and Lee Child. The late MacDonald, who created Travis McGee, gave into it. McGee's theory was that the more people who knew about him the better, because he was more likely to become lost in the tributaries of technology. And this was in the 1960s and '70s.
Child created a guy named Jack Reacher, an ex-military policeman who has done everything possible to remain private, meaning unknowable to the government. He has no address, no driver's license, no employment records, no health insurance records, no IRS records, no golf handicap, no credit cards. But the government needed to find him in the book "Without Fail,'' and did when the Secret Service agent looking for him used classified banking information to discover that Reacher occasionally taps his stash of money in a bank in Virginia and has it send funds to the Western Union closest to wherever he happens to be. He was found.
I know there has been some relief in our neck of the woods because Qwest did not provide records to the NSA. So, when you are talking to your mother today for Mother's Day, the conversation is safe, if you want to look at it that way.
But we have no privacy.
I guess you can either let that drive you crazy or be thankful that you live in the United States, still the best place in the world to live when you have no privacy.
Eventually we'll have some sort of "private" communications technology, but not just yet.
While a quite serious war against us is underway is no time to start pretending "public" means "private".
Yep. Them and the phone company and the IRS and the RNC and a thousand other state, local and federal entities.
Well put.
Your medical records are everywhere.
Your credit history is everywhere.
A prospective employer can find out just about anything he wants to about you.
Your driving records are everywhere.
Your police record is everywhere.
Just about anything ANYONE wants to know about you is available for a price.
And people are worried about the government knowing who you called???!!!
Privacy is an illusion that disappeared with the first mainframe computer.
BTW, one of the nice features of government employment is that when you go to buy a new car, they simply call the office and get the information they need about as fast as you can get there. Fast, easy, quick ~ no skin off my nose, and the new car, or house, is great.
My number is in the phone book. Also, it doesn't take much if you have a computer and some skills to find people anywhere in America.
Consider that to preserve ex post facto requirements that sex offenders register their address et al with police, it was successfully argued that there was no civil liberty or right being lost by such a requirement. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed -- so the way is now cleared for a requirement that every resident in the U.S. register his residence with the local police, exactly as Swiss residents have had to do for a long time.
No big deal, you say? Me too.
What's that about President Hillary...?
(* I don't have any good answers on the War On Drugs, btw. As a parent I truly dislike the Libertarian/Bill Buckley position, but...)
Wow! A Travis McGee reference. One of the greatest fictional characters ever created in American literature.
The common themes running through all of the Travis McGee series, was that Travis was always taking in broken and battered(not just physically), women and he would nurture them back to health.
Usually along the way, there would be attempts on his life, encounters with the authorities and payback of the ultimate type on evil doers everywhere. A hero by any other name.
Millions have grocery store cards - they have a data base that records everything you buy.
If you're on the Internet, there's a record of every site you visit.
If you ever fill out warranty cards for things you've purchased, there's a record for that.
If you use charge cards, there's a record of everything you bought.
And the phone cos. have always had a record of who you call. If they remove your name, and send the phone numbers to the gov't for analysis in the WOT, exactly how have we lost any privacy that we haven't been voluntarily giving up for years?
Eggs Ackley
I really don't see what the big deal is about, except of course the Dems trying to trash Bush as some kind of demonic dictator.
If the Government doesn't have my number yet, they can get it from the Maui phone book. I could care less.
Of course. Trashing Bush is what it's all about. But what really fries my socks is that they assume that we are all stupid enough to buy the flimsiest of stories.
I don't think many people are really that stupid, but I think people who hate Bush are hoping that at least some of us are.
It brings to mind the old adage, " Assume that all your telephone calls are public."
Why is it the liberals are for big government i.e. big brother, but cry crocodile tears about losing civil liberties. Guess it's only okay when they are in charge.
When something is a fact, no matter how much you hate it, it is still a fact. If you partake in any government program or entity overseen by government, no matter what the form, there is a public record somewhere. Computers just made it easier to put the dots together.
Conservatives clap when fraud is discovered and stopped when it comes to tax payer dollars, but don't seem to appreciate it was government dot connecting that caught the fraud.
Oh well.
This whole phone number brouhaha is just another attempt by the usual suspects to stir up more dissent and ill will against our President, our government, and our nation.
Good show. Me, I've lined my phone lines with lead 'cause the NSA has no right knowing that I'm in a torrid love triangle with Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, darn it!
Mum's da woid!
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