NSA have arranged briefings for the DEMOCRAT Congressional Leadership and appropriate Democrat Ranking Committee Members. Where is the record of their objections to the NSA Electronic Sweeping of the Welkin? Either Reid and Pelosi issue statements approving the NSA Operations or the Executive Branch terminates their Briefings and all other discussions with them. Send them to Coventry! Civility is a two-way Street!

They are looking at numbers to find patterns. Not listening to you talking to your bookie or mistress.

When the question is worded such that what is described is Data Mining about call records, without listening to actual contents, then the public is 2-1 in support. When the question implies listening in without cause or apparent safeguards, the answer is a very slight tilt towards “no.”

Bottom line, the US people still want to see heads roll and a**es kicked. Our enemies still think we will roll over and surrender if the going gets tough. (Heck, they already got a Vet like Murtha to say, “let’s give it up.”)

If you don’t know about ECHELON or CARNIVORE, then your opinion in this current debate is pointless. If you do know about both programs and you are still maintaining that what the NSA is doing is illegal/overreaching etc then you are a crazy idealogue.

Should there be congressional oversight of the program? Yes there already is.

Should there be a warrant? Aye, that’s the rub… How do you get a warrant for a faceless terrorist calling another faceless terrorist?

Is there room for political shenanigans? Oh yeah. But FBI records require warrants too but somehow Clinton ended up with them. Maybe we should put up a “dividing wall” between the security agencies to prevent that from happening…

As for Big Brother?

I want the right to smoke in public back. I want the right to drive in my car without being pulled over by police because I’m not wearing a seatbelt. I want the right to purchase medication from a pharmacy without a doctor’s prescription. I want the right to get to the airport 5 minutes before a flight and run down the concourse and into the plane gate like I did before 9/11. No no… I have to strip practically naked now…

There are far more important rights being lost in the name of dogooderism then there are in AT&T and the government knowing I call the playboy hotline.

I think most people are trying to find an excuse to not bash Bush, a natural reaction for us conservatives, but for me, I guard privacy from any presidential administration, because I know we are only three or four administrations away from George Orwell, if we make the wrong choices. And they always come with such clear instructions, don’t they? The problem with some of these choices is that they aren’t choices you can see, so most of the time, America just lays down and rolls over for it, when they have the choice to stand up and shout, and tell them they don’t like the government (or private industry, worse by far in my mind) to know so much about you.

I think they should make the law that you can’t gather this info without a warrant. You can’t build a database without court oversight, and that database should be locked, only accessed for it’s intended purpose (who amongst us hasn’t seen mission creep when it comes time for a politician to admit there isn’t much left to do on job X?), then destroyed. This is to prevent it’s misuse by the unscrupulous.

I don’t have a problem with them collecting my phone calls because a> They already know where I live, where I work, how much money I make, how I spend my money (through bank notification laws), the car i drive (BMV registration), my marital status, how many children I have, what kind of mail I receive etc; etc. b> Phone records are up for sale by the phone companies. If they can sell the information, I don’t have a problem with the government buying it.

What upsets me (especially with the ABC article) is that you have leftists screaming last year about how there needs to be an investigation into leakers. So Bush orders the investigation and they use the phone records. Now the leftists are up in arms because they might find the leakers!

Ya just can’t make some people happy.

The ‘data-mining’ program collects originating and receiving telephone numbers, time/date of the start and end of the call. This is not like the contents of a letter, it’s more like the information on the front of the envelope. No content is recorded. There is no expectation of privacy in either case.