Sorry for the strange $p-ell-ings, but I don't want to take chances anymore.

It is common knowledge inside the C-I-A, N-S-A, Department of Defense, Congress, the Administration and outside the government by a large part of the general public, that the following is a part of the Standard procedure for all ter-r0rists all over the world:

• They never use the same email address more than once.
• They never use the same ISP connection more than once.
• They always use a disposable cell phone for all telephone calls.
• They always use a pre-paid phone card for all telephone calls.
• They always throw away a pre-paid phone card after one call.
• They always use innocent sounding c-0de words.
• They always change c-0de words frequently.
• They never use suspicious words like al Qu-eye-dah, b0-mb, f1-ight instructions, A-Kay-4-7, etc. in emails and phone conversations.

A recent revelation shows that AT&T has been secretly funneling All phone conversations and internet traffic going through AT&T lines to the N-S-A. AT&T handles 300 million phone calls and 4,000 TeraBytes of internet data PER DAY. (4,000 TeraBytes is 4,000,000,000,000,000 characters.)

On May 11, "USA Today" published an article exposing domestic spying on All Americans by Verizon and BellSouth as well as AT&T. Hats off to Qwest who refused N-S-A's KGB-like scheme. Verizon and BellSouth have denied participation. The USA Today article was about "records" rather that funnelling live data.

Verizon's denial was rather ambiguous. They said the N-S-A didn't "approach" them (did somebody else?) And didn't "provide" the N S A with data (Neither did AT&T "provide" data - they just let N-S-A tap into their lines.)

On May 15th, ABC said that our government is spying on ABC News. The government says they are trying to find sources of leaks of information (that exposes the illegal doings of government officials.) I think our government should give the whistleblowers a medal and convict the officials instead of the other way around. Don't hang the messenger. The talk around the 'net by the journalists say this has nothing to do with security, they say it's an attempt to intimidate them from reporting anything that will embarrass the Administration – In today's scrambled world, embarrassment is bad, breaking the law has no consequences.

On May 21st, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security.

ChoicePoint, Inc. keeps over 16 billion records on Americans which it sells to the F-B-I and Ho-me-land Security with over a Billion $ in no-bid contracts. The F-B-I and Ho-me-land Security can't legaly get these records on their own, so they buy them. These aren't criminal records, but mainly reports on ordinary citizens. Things like your financial condition, education, references, motor vehicle records, assets, etc. Mexico, threatened criminal charges against ChoicePoint for their misuse of data.

ChoicePoint is the company that gave Jeb Bush's Florida the list of 94,000 Florida voters, most of them Black Democrats, which were removed from the voter rolls as "felons" before the 2000 election. 97% of them turned out to be non-felons and should have been allowed to vote. George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes and the Presidency by five electoral votes. ChoicePoint did it again in 2004, but because of a publicised investigation by CNN, Florida backed out of using the phoney list.

We don't need some government talking head on TV using self-serving convoluted logic to tell us sheep that this isn't a violation of our Bill of Rights. Just read the Fourth and Ninth Amendments of our Constitution and make up your own mind. No law passed by congress or executive order or presidential signing statements(1) can violate the Constitution, as interpreted under judicial review, without an amendment ratified by 3/4 of the states (Except for the Sixteenth Amendment.)
    (1) Presidential Signing Statement: adding a note to a new law stating that the law doesn't apply to him. – G.W Bush so far has signed over 750 laws this way!

The history of this country shows that the primary force behind the American Revolution wasn't "taxation without representation". What outraged our Founding Fathers was search and seizures under British "writs of assistance". That's why our Constitution so explicitly forbids it. Sam Adams and his Sons of Liberty committed most of their boycotts and acts of violence after the British had repealed nearly all of their tariffs.

George Mason (father of our Bill of Rights), Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and all, forgot to mention "computer" personal data searches or seizures in the Bill of Rights, although it does mention "papers". So please, someone tell me, what is the difference?

"The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protects the privacy and liberty of Americans. It says the government can't search or seize you without a warrant issued on probable cause to believe you are involved in a crime. This right is the line between a democracy and a police state, where the state can search or seize at will. That is the line that the NSA program erased."
– The Chicago Sun-Times, May 16, 2006

In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that Fourth Amendment protections apply except when national security is involved. (What ever that means - who decides what is or isn't national security?) In 1972, the Court noted that this was an big opening for abuse and suggested that Congress do something about it. In 1978 Congress passed FISA so that the government can bypass the conventional courts but they must go through the FISA court before or within 72 hours after the information gathering. But nobody would ask the court to approve $pying of everybody, everywhere, forever.

After President Bush said he was bypassing the FISA requirements, John Dean in testifying before Congress said that it was "the first time a President has actually confessed to an impeachable offense." (John Dean was the White House Counsel for President Nixon)

The Attorney General, Albert Gonzales, told a Congressional committee these laws don't apply to the President. But he does say, trust us, we won't abuse it. (What a relief…) You may come to a different conclusion if you read Article II, Section 3, Clause 4 of our Constitution. Some Congressmen spoke out against this in front of the TV cameras, but nobody did anything about it. So, when it comes to information gathering, we now have a President who has assumed absolute power.

Other democracies and even some dictatorships have these rights, most dictatorships don't. America used to… I expect my emails and phone conversations to be private as long as I haven't committed a crime. In fact, I demand it. I don't want to give up my most important freedoms when there are other, better alternatives for catching ter-r0rists.

Some uninformed person on the internet wrote, "I'm not a ter-r0rist, what difference does it make to me?"

In an open society the freedom from illegal search and seizures is a key part of our other freedoms – with it you are free to think and live your life in any responsible manner. It doesn't help lawbreakers, it assures freedom from demagogs. Without it the government decides what is in their best interests. Are you sure you can really trust our politicians? Tommorow's politicians?

It's contrary to the nature of power to look at this gold mine of information and not be tempted: there are so many possibilities for control. If the people in power are on our side and are protecting the American way, why do they think they have to break the law to get what they decide is best for us? Are we a nation of laws or not? Is it ok to break laws if it keeps us "safe"?

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Ben Franklin

"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." -James Madison

In The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer wrote: "The overwhelming majority of Germans did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away. The Nazi terror in the early years affected the lives of relatively few Germans."

On May 17, C I A nominee Gen. Michael Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee the surveillance program used a "probable cause" standard that made it unlikely that information about average Americans would be scrutinized. — Sure. - Why then are they spending all that money gathering information on millions of Americans, if they aren't going to look at it? It's irrevalent anyway: The Fourth Amendment doesn't say anything about scrutinizing the information -- it forbids collecting the information. They also broke the law that requires approval from the FISA court.

- The end justifies the means. - Two wrongs make a right.

N-S-A has been collecting massive amounts of data for 4 years. How many ter-r0rists have they caught this way? You know if they caught one they would stage a media circus. Is this the way to keep us "safe"?

A short bio is relevant here:
I started programming computers 43 years ago in the Air Force using assembly language and I worked as a programmer (almost 20 languages) and systems analyst throughout my career. -- I'm not trying to pat myself on the back -- I just want you to know that I Know when a computer expert is trying to con me.

There are fundamental limitations to everything. Computers included. (But someone may say - "If the computer geeks are smart enough, who knows?") And I can try to fly by flapping my arms, but I've never been able to make it off the ground. (But someone may say - "Maybe if you took more vitamin pills, who knows?")

With the volume of spying this big, all the super computers in the world would only process a small part of this information each day. The computers can only flag suspicious key words for further processing, to search for "patterns", to put the sender in a "watch" category, etc. The volume of data that the computer would spill out would overwhelm the people that are necessary to interpret and act on it. The cost would be astronomical – even by government standards.

Ter-r0rists and $py$ will be the first to slip through this sieve – it might take a several centuries to catch one ter-r0rist this way. I can think of several ways that are more efficient (if all they are trying to do is catch the bad guys.)

They want you to believe that this is only a "database of phone numbers". There are already databases of phone numbers on the internet. They come up with stupid explanations to convince the masses that they only have your best interests at heart. Knowing full well that the local yokels won't know much about data processing systems, they know most of us will fall for it. This kind of chicanery has worked for them again and again.

"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." -Adolf Hitler

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -Herman Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshall

This "database" is only one part of what is going on -- see Wired Magazine's article -- http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/index.blog?entry_id=1478704

"Mining" all this data for "patterns" is a hopeless task. But, going the other way is straight forward: if they want to find out about you or me, they just feed the computer our IDs and let it crank out a big bunch of info. On the other hand, by the time they know who the bad guys are, they already have a file on them without these records. ("Mining" and "patterns" are our government's fuzzy-thinking terms for catching the bad guys.)

But someone may say - "If the N-S-A computer geeks are smart enough, who knows, maybe they've figured out something you haven't thought of." – Either they aren't so smart or their bosses have other goals. I know when I am being conned by someone talking about computers. Everything has fundamental limits.

N-S-A's "data mining," and "social network analysis." are supposed to work like this: You don't want to catch just one bad guy, you want to catch his friends too. So when you find a bad guy, you go through the database and find out who he has contacted in the last few years and get them all.

The problem is the bad guys prefer not to be caught, so they are very careful who they contact and make sure no "patterns" can emerge. To overcome this, the good guys can't just search for a name and find who he talked to. They have to thoroughly examine millions of TeraBytes of data. Not counting phone conversations – 4,000 TeraBytes/Day X 365 X 4 years = 5 million TeraBytes so far for just internet traffic. Nobody can grasp a number this big. Of course, they could easily discard lots of this, but it still would take a very long time.

Since the government must know that the ter-r0rists' standard procedures can bypass this "data mining", what is behind this? Who are they trying to control?

The Baltimore Sun, May 18, 2006:
Bush rejected President Clinton's effective, legal surveillance program, called ThinThread, that did not invade privacy to adopt the current NSA spying program, which is ineffective, illegal and invasive of citizens' privacy rights. For example, its ability to sort through massive amounts of data to find threat-related communications far surpassed the existing system, sources said. It also was able to rapidly separate and encrypt U.S.-related communications to ensure privacy. So, the question jumping off the page may be: Why would Bush use a program that does not actually assist the finding of terrorists, yet also has the disadvantage of invading Americans' privacy rights?

The upshot is that the NSA's warrantless surveillance program is ineffective at finding terrorists. Without ThinThread's data-sifting assets, the warrantless surveillance program was left with a sub-par tool for sniffing out information, and that has diminished the quality of its analysis, according to intelligence officials. Sources say the NSA's existing system for data-sorting has produced a database clogged with corrupted and useless information.

So, what is the real purpose of Bush's NSA spying program? Is terrorism being used as a cover to collect reams of information about Americans to establish a central database? Could there be political motives?

When word of warrantless eavesdropping got out, President Bush insisted that the N-S-A was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."

Now, we know that this wasn't true and it has been going on for 4 years. There are ONLY two possibilities: Either Bush knew and was lying, Or he didn't know, which doesn't exactly instill confidence in his competent leadership.

Of course everybody (except me) knows our government wouldn't do it to spy on us, they carefully kept it secret for 4 years so the bad guys wouldn't know they were doing it, they say. Does the government really think ter-r0rists are so dumb they won't suspect they might be monitored and wouldn't be careful about who they call? They are smart enough to build a dirty nu-cle-ar b0-mb. I can't, can you? Maybe they are dumb only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we can catch them then. Even though the cat's out of the bag, our government says they have no intention of stopping their $pying on everybody.

If not, who are the targets? What is the point?

If you don't believe in "Big Brother" in America, do a search on "Total Information Awareness" on Google or at The Library of Congress web site http://catalog.loc.gov/ – They sound like a bunch of loonies.

We have given up the freedoms that make us Americans, hiding from our fears under the warm-fuzzy cloak of the "W-ar on ter-r0r". – Don't you see that the ter-r0rists have Already Won?

Aloha, Larry