Bush, the NSA and our lovely Phone companies

Yesterday we found out that the three biggies, Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth are helping the government compile call information on millions of American citizens, both consumers and businesses.

President Bush told reporters “we’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,” but that’s simply not true. Although the Bush administration claims they're only directing this illegal spying at terror suspects or international calls, that's simply not true. The government is tracking the calls and communications of millions of ordinary Americans with the help of the phone companies. Another fine example of this administration's blatant disregard for our Constitution and our civil liberties. Take action now!

From an editorial in today's New York Times: "What we have here is a clandestine surveillance program of enormous size, which is being operated by members of the administration who are subject to no limits or scrutiny beyond what they deem to impose on one another. If the White House had gotten its way, the program would have run secretly until the war on terror ended — that is, forever."

One more time we're seeing an example of how we've become like George Orwell's book "1984." In that story, three slogans are engraved in the Ministry of Truth building: "War is peace," "Freedom is slavery," and "Ignorance is strength."