Un-fucking-believable. No, actually, I guess it’s not that unbelievable at all that President Bush lied to the American public. Again. Last year, when it was leaked out that the President had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on people who were suspected to have links to terrorist organizations, Bush stressed that only emails or phone calls where one party was outside the USA were being monitored. But it turns out he may have left out a small bit of information:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.

The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated Monday by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency’s domestic call-tracking program. Hayden declined to comment about the program.

The NSA’s domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA’s efforts to create a national call database.

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. “In other words,” Bush explained, “one end of the communication must be outside the United States.”

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers’ names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA’s domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

Don Weber, a senior spokesman for the NSA, declined to discuss the agency’s operations. “Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide,” he said. “However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law.”

The White House would not discuss the domestic call-tracking program. “There is no domestic surveillance without court approval,” said Dana Perino, deputy press secretary, referring to actual eavesdropping.

She added that all national intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government “are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists.” All government-sponsored intelligence activities “are carefully reviewed and monitored,” Perino said. She also noted that “all appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on the intelligence efforts of the United States.”

The government is collecting “external” data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting “internals,” a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the program. This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it’s been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for “social network analysis,” the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.

John Scalzi has written before that he thinks our government works most effectively when one party controls the Congress and the other the Presidency. It establishes something that’s been almost unheard of in this country for the past six years: a system of checks and balances. Scalzi’s thoughts on this subject have merit, I think, because the GOP-controlled Congress is doing a terrible job of checking President Bush’s mad grabs for power. Lump in the U.S. Supreme Court, which has taken a huge swing to the right in the last year, and now we have the other two branches of government — the checks and balances — that can’t seem to get out of the President’s way fast enough. Sure, upon news of this being leaked today, Republican Senators and Congresspersons made a huge stink about it, saying that such spying is wrong, that there will be investigations, and blah blah blah. . . .

What, do they think we’re retarded? Nothing is going to change. In a few weeks, this whole clusterfuck will blow over, the cable news channels will have moved onto something else, and President Bush and his Death Commandos will continue to merrily steamroll over our civil rights. And what’s worse, when the elections roll around this fall, despite the abysmal job that the Bush Youth Brigade* has done, despite how low they’re ranking in the polls right now, the fucksticks of America will re-elect the Republicans and our country will continue to accept the unlubricated assfucking we’ve been taking ever since November of 2000.

Times like this I wish I had the money to buy my boat and just sail on down to the Caribbean.

JAB

*Even though the “Bush Fat-Old-White Brigade” would be more accurate. What can I say; I like Hitler parallels in regards to Bush.