The Ming Report

BIG BROTHER

May 12, 2006 - We are creating a massive data base to record every number that is called from your telephone and every number that calls your number. We are doing so that we can establish your pattern of calls to determine whether you fit a profile we have created to tell us who our enemies are. That is called data mining. AT&T is cooperating. So are Verizon and Bell South. Qwest has refused to give the NSA access to its records citing their responsibility to keep their customers affairs private. The President says that his government is collecting your private information so that he can fiercely protect you and your privacy. His justification for this program is that old refrain – we are only targeting terrorists. Innocent Americans have nothing to fear.

I say “we” are doing these things because you and I, your children and grandchildren are paying for this massive intrusion into our lives. We pay the taxes and our descendants will pay off the borrowing it takes to run this and all the other government intrusions that Bush, Cheney, and Company thinks up. That is the reality of it. The government is using our tax dollars to snoop into our affairs. Why does the government need to know who you call and how often? With this information it can tell if you are up to something. It can detect who your associates are. But, says the President, it won’t be listening to your conversations – at least not at first.

AT&T serves the community in which I live. According to the news reports AT&T turned the records of my home phone over to NSA. Verizon serves the community in which my office is located. Verizon turned over the records of my office phone. The National Security Agency now has every phone call I have made or received since September 11, 2001 in a database so that it can fiercely protect my privacy. Somehow that does not reassure me. Neither does it reassure me that the President promises that the government won’t listen in when I talk to my clients or my friends.

Oh, I know, I don’t have any thing to fear if I am not doing anything wrong. I suppose that is true but there are varying definitions of “wrong.” Many of the President’s most ardent supporters consider that opposing his splendid little war is disloyal, unpatriotic and wrong. Those same people consider that advocating an excise tax on excess oil company profits is anti-American, unpatriotic, and wrong. For that matter how does the President define “terrorist”? Words that describe the targets of governmental power tend to expand exponentially to cover anyone the powerful want to get. There was a reason why the terrorists that gave birth to this country felt it necessary to enumerate the citizen’s protections in the Bill of Rights.

I take it as gospel that every word I speak – on the telephone; at our dinner table; or in our bed room – is overheard and recorded. I am equally sure that every e-mail I send and all those I receive find their way into a government database. I am just old and stubborn enough that I refuse to modify what I say or what I write to suit Big Brother. I have that naïve belief that George Orwell wrote fiction and not prophecy.