Recent Spying

I find it irritating that so many on the left call it a "lie" when Bush says that he is "not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," when it is pretty clear to me that this is 'plausibly deniable' lawyerly talk that can easily be understood as a truthful statement if it is put in slightly different words: "There are millions of innocent Americans through whose personal lives we will not troll." Certainly there are two or three million Americans out of three hundred million who do not have telephones. Babies and homeless people come to mind. It's just like the White House's careful claim that the Plame investigation leaker would not be "fired" or even "admonished" but rather "taken care of."

Early today in the news I was hearing that Bell South was denying the reports of several days ago that they had handed over phone records of their customers. By the end of the day Verizon and AT&T had joined in and now all three seem to be claiming that the NSA came by millions of peoples' phone records by magic or some other means. Sounds kind of suspicious to me. I am glad that people like the EFF the ACLU and others are there to put a little pressure on them, but one hopes that a lot more people join in this fight. Also, it might be time to sign up for that Skype account. I believe that Skype to Skype calls are securly encrypted and cannot be tapped, at least not without the help of Skype.

I find this recent NSA scandal to be one of the more frightening things that the Bush administration has done so far.