The Other Side of Data-Mining

As I read this morning’s Chicago Tribune on-line edition, I was amazed at how quickly and fiercely the editorial board came down on the right side of the NSA telephone data-mining revelation. Here is just one of many nuggets to be found in the editorial:

The government apparently has even bigger plans “to create a database of every call EVER made within the nation’s borders” to identify and track suspected terrorists. Think about that. Every phone call ever made. No, not so fast.

The editorial then goes on to compare this effort to the infamous Admiral Poindexter-led Total Information Awareness (TIA) trial balloon, which was unceremoniously punctured after immediate and overwhelming congressional and public outcry. It also looks at it in relation to the secret (read “illegal”) NSA surveillance program targeting overseas communications initiated or terminating inside the USA, saying that it can be argued that it’s justified with modest judicial oversight. But get this…

But this vast mining of domestic phone records, this is something else…Why would the government seek and STORE records of EVERY telephone call to your doctor, our lawyer, your next-door-neighbor. TELL US.

But you know, I can see the McLiar/Vader side of this argument. I mean after all, if this program had been initiated during the early days of the Clinton administration perhaps all those phone calls made between Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and any other TERRORIST in their cell would have tipped off the NSA and FBI to their heinous plot to kill innocent children attending a day care center inside the Murrah Federal Building in 1995. I’m CERTAIN that all of those domestic terrorists targeting doctors and patients at LEGAL abortion clinics would have been captured and punished. Hell, they may have been able to find and prosecute all those pesky pornographers who so vex the religious right. At the very least, this data-mining may have resulted in finding out which oil company executives participated in planning and writing the McLiar/Vader energy policy.
In the end, I know that this kind of policy couldn’t have existed under a Clinton administration – even if he had advocated it. After all, he had a hostile house which would have been happy to find ANY EXCUSE to impeach him... and with this idiotic, ass-backwards, and moronic policy, they'd have been right to!