NSA aims for 'database of every US call made'


Washington - The agency in charge of a US domestic spying program has been secretly collecting phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, including calls made within the United States, USA Today reported on Thursday.

It said the National Security Agency has been building up the database using records provided by three major phone companies - AT&T Inc, Verizon Communications Inc and BellSouth Corp - but that the program "does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations."

USA Today said its sources for the story were "people with direct knowledge of the arrangement," but it did not give their names or describe their affiliation.

The existence of an NSA eavesdropping programme launched after the September 11 attacks was revealed in December.

Defending the controversial program, US President George Bush and his administration officials have said it aims to uncover links between international terrorists and their domestic collaborators and only targets communications between a person inside the United States and a person overseas.

But USA Today said that calls originating and terminating within the United States have not escaped the NSA's attention.

"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 US borders, it said the source added.

The NSA has "access to records of billions of domestic calls," USA Today said. Although customers' names and addresses are not being handed over, "the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information," it said.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA from 1999 to 2005 and was nominated by Bush on Monday as director of the CIA, would have overseen the call-tracking program, the paper said.

Hayden, as well as NSA and White House officials, declined to discuss the program, USA Today said.

Among major US telecommunications companies, only Qwest Communications International Inc. has refused to help the NSA program, the paper said.

Qwest, with 14 million customers in the Western United States, was "uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants," USA Today said.

It said the three companies cooperating with the NSA "provide local and wireless phone service to more than 200 million customers."


sometimes i really hate this country.

go Democrats!!!!!

Call connected through the NSA
Complete transmission through the NSA

Suspending your rights for the duration of the permanent
WAR

yeah. how creepy is that?

my only hope is that i bore them all to death with mine.

So THAT'S what's wrong with my phone!!!!!
I could care less anyway.
I've been living my life as if a camera is always
following me for as long as I can remember anyway.

I watched a documentary last night that was scarier than that,
and I'm actually glad that they realize they have to do something.

If I were Bush, I'd be paranoid as hell too.

I'm sure there are many who would love to see us fall,
just because.

I wish they'd install cameras on every lightpost on my block.

Then again....this is just how I feel today.
I may feel completely different tomorrow.

woah woah woah ...

Not that I approve of this; I think it's absurd and illegal, but they're only getting call RECORDS, not recorded calls.

In other words, they will have a record of phone calls made to and from you. They get the information about dialed number and duration, and I think that's about it.

Don't get me wrong - I think this is ridiculous, and I'm ashamed that my company is participating. But it's not conversations.

BigJohn

yeah, as far as we know.

i wouldn't put anything past em. i don't trust my government anymore. it sux to say that, but i don't.

There might not be a country left if psychotic terrorists manage to smuggle in suitcase nukes that they've reportedly bought from the Russian mob. If you don't believe the Russian mob story, just remember that if Iran manages to build nuclear weapons, their lunatic of a president will give them to terrorists in order to attack Israel and us. If our government can prevent that and other attacks, I say let them do all the surveillance it needs. I'm a democrat and I despise Bush but this surveillance thing is something I actually agree with. I'd rather have my calls monitored than to be vaporized.

thank god I don't have a secret boy

it's a TMBG quote, but then Cronny came up with a 1000X better one.

i see what you're saying, Bones. it just gives me the willies. i'm a child of the 60s though. i question everything. i don't like giving up my libertys even if it's for the greater good.

aw shucks, biff

I'm gonna copy over what I wrote on that conservative message board that klim and I joined a while ago. I was talking about wiretappings so you'll just have to use your imagination a bit to appropriate for this topic:

What I really think the issue here is is that unwarranted wire-tappings could begin a snowball-effect (hah.. I can never think of that term the same way since I saw Clerks).

The government already had the ability to wiretap anyone for whom they could get a warrant, and the court that gives out those warrants already gives out about 95% of every warrant requested. On top of that, the government is allowed to wait 72 hours after beginning to eavesdrop to file for a warrant that lets them do so. So it's really not an issue of urgency, and this new unwarranted wiretapping does not make us any safer. The only thing it does do is cut back just a little bit on our rights. Just because this is "wartime" (and someone please explain to me exactly how you declare war on a feeling anyway?), we can't suddenly give up the things that make us what we are.

It's quite easy to compare what's happening right now to being swindled. The patriot act was proposed a month after 9/11, when the country was still shaken and scared. Hardly any time was given to congress to read it and understand it. The mere fact that it was called "the PATRIOT act" shows exactly how deceitful its writers were being. At a time of panic such as that, who wanted to look unAmerican by voting no on something call "the patriot act"? I don't personally worry about being eavesdropped. What I worry about is what right could be revoked next in the name of my so-called "protection".

of course, there's always klim's argument too: I believe only robots should listen on our private conversations, because they're cold and dead inside and don't know what's being said anyway.
so I say wire taps are dandy as long as the wires are attached to a robot

followed by: I changed my mind about robots and wire tapping.
There's no way i'm gonna let machine gun, chainsaw weilding killing machines listen to my prank calls to sex shops. (what an awesome string of nouns!) who knows what robot might hear something that offends them and they totally freak out and start "roboting" everything in sight (this is why we don't make cartoons insulting robots)

bullet-proof!

we're a couple of geniouses.....jeanyasis.......smart pants'!!!

theres some stuff being uncovered here at the moment that the republicans were funding the National party's election campaign in exchange for them being more accomidating to US foreign policy, good thing they still managed to lose I guess

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/video_popup_windows_skin/712192

there's a news report on it

wintson peters cracks me up, nobody voted for him yet he still managed to become foreign affairs minister after running an anti immigration campaign. all the guy does is dig up dirt on other people but man is he good at it

America rocks. we run everybody.

well how else are you supposed to bring about the end of the world

exactly!