Remember When Telephone Records Were Considered Private?

Stuck in a hotel in Seattle on a business trip (which explains the lack of blogging) and I’m watching the C-Span’s rerun of Senate hearings mentioning the latest bit of extra-constitutional shenanigans by the current squatters in the executive branch. The battle lines seem to be predictably drawn along party lines (at least from the parts I’ve seen), with the Democrats taking the “separation of powers keep America from sliding into despotism” position and Republicans taking the ” don’t mention anything, lest the terrorists find out that we’re pissed about 9/11″ position. Unfortunately for the almighty Bush and his fellow patriots, those bastards at USA Today couldn’t resist tipping off the terrorists about the NSA’s attempt to gather data about every call made within our country. So there’s a helpful hint, Mr. Bin Laden. Never, ever use a telephone in the United States.

But what’s especially odd is that the President-fellating caucus were concerned that Americans might draw a parallel between this scandal and the NSA’s warrantless wiretap program. I suppose one might see a common thread between two programs that pry into the communications of the American people without any judicial or legislative oversight, but collecting information about telephone calls isn’t the same as listening to the contents of those calls. One Senator went as far as insisting that that telephone records aren’t private information, which seems sorta odd considering some recent Congressional action :

In a unanimous vote Tuesday the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 4709, the Law Enforcement and Phone Privacy Protection Act of 2006.

The bill introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, back in February 2006 would amend Title 18 to provide criminal penalties for fraudulent sale or solicitation of unauthorized disclosure of phone records.

The bipartisan legislation was approved by a vote of 409-0.

‘Few things are more personal and potentially more revealing than our phone records,’ Smith said in a statement. ‘A careful study of these records may reveal details of our medical or financial life. It may even disclose our physical location and occupation — a serious concern for undercover police officers and victims of stalking or domestic violence.’

If passed in the Senate, the legislation would impose serious criminal penalties against those people who sell, transfer, purchase or receive confidential phone records of a telephony company without prior consent of the customer.

“If passed in the Senate” is turning into a mighty big “if” these days. Unlike the people’s house, Senate leaders think your telephone records are, like the name and occupation of Joe Wilson’s wife, public information that should can be shared freely at the President’s sole discretion.


posted by greg on May 11, 2006 @ 10:57 pm

12 comments »

  1. Paper Reports NSA Collecting Phone Records

    The government is secretly collecting records of ordinary Americans' phone calls in an effort t

    Trackback by Unpartisan.com Political News and Blog Aggregator — May 12, 2006 @ 12:46 am

  2. Privacy IS no more.

    Comment by Mike Meyer — May 12, 2006 @ 10:00 am

  3. Why is it that we can create a secret NSA database to track the phone calls made by every American and collate that information to the point that we can find patterns in who calls whom and determine from that whether or not a person is talking to a terrorist, but we can’t create a database to determine if a guy applying for a job is using a SSN that belongs to a dead person?

    Just wondering.

    Comment by Humbug — May 12, 2006 @ 11:01 am

  4. Here’s something we can all do about domestic spying http://evolutionarymiddleman.blogspot.com/

    Comment by John — May 12, 2006 @ 3:21 pm

  5. OK, the president can have my phone records, but I want Karl Rove’s.

    Comment by kamachanda — May 12, 2006 @ 7:05 pm

  6. Most of our civil rights erosions have been driven by the drug war. Almost all the legal decisions that have set up the claims that the current incursions are legal come from that.

    I suppose it’s nice to see the erosions used for something useful. But I’m afraid that the combo of two unending “wars” , the drug war and the war on terror, could drive the Bill of Rights into oblivion.

    Comment by peteathome — May 13, 2006 @ 5:03 am

  7. Let’s give everybody in Congress a Raise, before they beat us to it. What do you say?

    Comment by Mike Meyer — May 13, 2006 @ 8:27 pm

  8. Maybe the Neo-Cons are playing six degrees of seperation. Find the six people that seperate any person they may be interested in from Bin Ladin, show that relationship in the NSA’s files about that person’s phone habits and get a warrant to tap that person’s phone…. Except for the get a warrant part, the president doesn’t need a warrant cause he said so. Now the average american doesn’t need to worry unless he’s a whistleblower about corporate misconduct, financial fraud or other white collar corruption. That might get ya to Gitmo…. Might be a problem if you’re interested in government reform or accountability too…. And Karl would never use anything unrelated to terrorism to make someone toe the neocon’s line….

    What a Great country….

    Comment by Kamachanda — May 14, 2006 @ 2:03 pm

  9. Those little mailers with the very small print that telecoms use to ‘expalin’ their privacy policy are overdue for a re-write. I predict more and smaller print than before.

    Comment by buma — May 15, 2006 @ 11:48 am

  10. I decided to post here in particular because this looked to be a bit of a more entertaining honestly left web site than found at False News.com (Fox News Channel). In fact, checking by there, they seem to have put a block on the website, where you get a whole lotta nothing trying to reach the web site itself. Could be they don’t want to share a web site or address now with people who disagree with their more radical new left (the dishonest left) approach to “the news”. I don’t bother watching the gyrations and pretzle tricks of these guys anyway so I’m not missing anything.

    So, onto the NSA wiretapping and phone log collections. As CBS News explained without stating the obvious, guilt by association. If Ahmed called a pizza parlor for take out and Joe and Jane called the SAME pizza parlor also for take out. And if Ahmed had also a phone number for some cousin “with possible terrorist connections” in Afghanistan. At this point, the only connection that Joe and Jane have with Ahmed, is that they like pizza. Now, how will phone records of this sort establish a “terrorist network” pattern?

    Comment by Arch Druid Dhuarvos — May 16, 2006 @ 12:19 am

  11. Awesome blog. Peace out until next time TabathaOster

    Comment by TabathaOster — May 18, 2006 @ 11:20 am

  12. http:// Hello, it’s very good site too:

    Comment by Hi gais — July 2, 2006 @ 3:53 pm

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