Hello?

HELLO? HELLO?

I'm not usually so gung ho on spying/civil rights-type stuff. I mean, I'm your usual liberal, but those just aren't the issues that get me going. But this phone thing? I'm aghast.

The security rationale for the NSA needing to know how often and how long I talk to my mother and sister? For knowing that S calls me between 5 and 6 every single day for approximately four minutes? And yes, they are talking about me, because they are talking about "every call made within the country," according to CNN (and I checked to see if this was just one of those CNN goes headline on something that everyone already knows about or that doesn't actually matter, but this story is big and getting bigger).

I'm emailing my senators right now.

Tagore could never have imagined this...

Edited to add: Now the Times is on it, and this is insane:

"It's not a wiretapping program, it's simply a compilation, according to the report here, of numbers that phone companies maintain," said Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

He compared it to "mail covers" and "pen registers," techniques long used by law-enforcement authorities to record the addresses on letters or calls made by individuals under investigation.

Jeff, my friend, do you see those last two words there? Those would be "UNDER INVESTIGATION." Do you understand the difference between compiling information about people UNDER INVESTIGATION and compiling information about EVERYBODY???

Sometimes I just want to slap people upside the head.

Sometimes I just want to slap the whole world upside the head.