63% of Americans in a recent survey said that they approve of the NSA illegally collecting phone records from various companies. These records will supposedly be used to find terrorists. So, if instead of calling your grandma you dial the wrong number and call some person, group, or business that's been labelled as "suspicious" you can be sent down to Guantanemo.. It's not that bad... yet.
These idiots in the survey believe that "finding terrorists" outweigh privacy concerns. Let's be frank. We're not talking about a situation where there is one mastermind terrorist and we're trying very hard to track him down (although with a multiple hundred billion dollar defense budget, we can't do that either). We are talking about potentially hundreds of thousands of people who could be recruited to do us harm. Searching for terrorists in the USA is like fighting against the VietCong. In the end, you're going to spend a lot of money and do a lot of harm to yourself while doing very little damage to the enemy.
Terrorism is not an army that can be defeated. Secure borders will not stop it, a police state will not stop it, and destroying all civil liberties will not stop it, these actions will just make us much more like them. Do you think Osama belives in a right to privacy? Do you think that he believes in natural rights such as the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom to do what you want as long as you don't hurt anyone else? Not likely.
The NSA is an awful part of the government. Responsible to no one, they veto search warrants into their illegal activities by denying clearance to other government agencies such as the DOJ. An out of control agency such as this needs to be decapitated, the way to do that is to have congress cut off the flow of money, which in itself is probably classified.
And thank you QWEST for having the balls not to bend over and let the government do its worst on you and your customers.
