All your personal data belongs to Bush

Anybody keeping track of just how many secret surveillance programs are ongoing in this administration? Just off the top of my head, there's the Patriot Act that allows the government to obtain your personal records, search your house and bug your computer, not only without disclosure to you, but forbids anyone contacted about you from discussing the requests for data. There's the Pentagon's Talon program, that compiles dossiers on "suspicious" individuals that could threaten military establishments. These we have to come to find out include Quakers planning non-violent protests and vegans picketing a fried chicken franchise. Never mind the military branch is not even supposed to be spying domestically, they are sharing their intel with the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, state and local police via the central military command at Northcom and vice versa.

We know DHS is opening foreign mail sent to US residents. We know the NSA is eavesdropping on all international calls without a warrant, and thanks to Glenn Greenwald for reminding us that they also continue to compile comprehensive records of every telephone number which every person inside the U.S. calls, every telephone number from which they receive calls, and the duration of the calls.

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” the paper quoted one source as saying. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within U.S. borders, it said the source added. . . .

Think about that. Every single phone number you have called is stored in a database for future reference. And now we were just told that anyone who crossed a border has been assigned a terrorist rating number at the same time the DHS has rolled out virtual strip searches for air travelers. These are just the programs that get the press. There are dozens more smaller datamining projects that we know about that go unmentioned. Surely there are still some that haven't yet been exposed. Our government claims they only target terrorists, but you have to ask, with this all-encompassing surveillance of every US citizen, just who does our government think is the enemy here?

Last word goes to Glenn, who sums it up better than I could.

Aggressively investigating what the administration has been doing over the last five years, behind the impenetrable wall of secrecy it erected, is not an option, and it isn't something to do for drama, political gain, or emotional retribution. It is vital because our democracy can only function if citizens know what its Government is doing.

I hope the Democratic Party is listening to him. Politically safe complacency is no longer an option.