Largest database ever created is sinister

In the past week or so, it’s been reported that the government has been spying on U.S. citizens.

In what has been called the largest database ever compiled, telephone records have been meticulously and quite probably illegally collected by our government. With the volume of records collected, it is very likely that you or someone you know has had their telephone records scrutinized.

What do you suppose they’re looking for? It seems an unlikely way to effectively track down terrorists. Can one actually detect terrorist activity by how many times someone calls their grandmother?

Actually, it seems more like a really great way to waste needed manpower in yet another expensive project that will likely yield few good tangible results. It’s also an example of how much the current administration values citizens’ Constitutional rights, which is to say, not at all.

It’s easy enough to make the connection of terrorists calling overseas, particularly if they’re calling to parts of the world known for being unfriendly. We probably already watch those, and the laws aren’t the same when it comes to listening in on non-citizens’ international conversations.

George Bush assures us that no one’s actually listening to every conversation, and that numbers are just being collected for cross-referencing; no names are actually being used.

He’s also trying to sell the American public a bridge in Brooklyn, I hear.

Being in the news business, I can tell you if you give me a person’s phone number, I can generally have their name and address via the Internet in less than 30 seconds. More like five, with a high-speed connection.

That is, unless the number is connected to a cell phone, particularly a prepaid one, whose numbers generally have no names attached to them, unless the owner pays by credit card. Even then, the account may not have a name attached to it in company records.

I would imagine the terrorists know this and that they choose to communicate primarily by cell phones with prepaid plans paid in cash.

So how do you determine someone is a potential terrorist by cross-referencing just the phone numbers used to make domestic calls on land lines?

You don’t.

If someone named Hassan calls someone named Mohammed, and both live in say, California, isn’t it kind of impossible to determine correctly whether or not they are terrorists just by the frequency of times they call one another? To make a correct determination, wouldn’t you have to violate their civil rights further, and find out what they talk about? Or dig into their personal lives a bit, only to find out they’re college buddies, cousins, or even gay lovers? Is this anyone’s business, even the government’s?

Civil liberties aside, isn’t it going to take a lot of time and money to determine something so useless? Perhaps there’s some secret correlation I don’t know about between the number of times one calls one’s grandmother and blowing the wicked West to kingdom come, but I have a tendency to doubt it.

More likely, I think, is something more sinister. Listening in on people’s phone conversations, or even knowing the numbers they dial often is a great way for the government to know all about and keep a record of a person’s associations.

Under this new surveillance, the government will be able to tell who might be thinking of joining a protest organization. Have you called Amnesty International lately? The ACLU? Thinking of volunteering as an activist of some sort for the next election? Your phone records could just tip the government off to it.

We already have plenty of laws providing law enforcement officials with legal, constitutional tools for surveillance, should a situation warrant it. Millions of everyday American citizens do not fall into the category of a situation that warrants it.

(Originally published in The Easton News, May 18, 2006)