NSA Surveillance

10 May 2006

It is time to question the administration more closely about the NSA surveillence program which is collecting domestic information. The administration has repeatedly assured us that they were not collecting domestic information.According to USA Today, they have the three largest phone companies, which means they know every phone call you make from you cell, home phone, or office. They also know everyone that calls you.

They calim to not have adresses but just phone numbers and termination points. It is easy to cross reference and find someone’s adress in a database either by knowing a name and their location as in switchboard.com or just imputing a phone number into a reverse lookup directory. I know this becasue these are tools I use to do fundraising for the Cook County Republican Party. I also once use this trick, figuring that a U.S. senator would not be listed to see if you were listed. I was able to pull up on switchboard.com your home address and phone number. I was not happy about this becasue the times are dangerous. I would never utilize such personal information, in fact I am even not happy looking it up for fundraising purposes.

According to the AP this morning the Justice Department stymied an investigation by its Office of Professional Responsibility into the surveillence program by denying the lawyers a security clearance so that they could have access to the information about the program .This stymied investigation would have given Congress and the American people the information they needed to judge the program.

In the hearing for Judge Alito you said you were concerned about the surveillence taking in everyday innocent citizens. It appears to be doind that now. We cannot sit by and say I have nothing to hide therefore it does not matter becasue if the government has the information they also have the power to decide what is right and wrong.

Please do something about this. We cannot allow the government this much information. It is not a far leap to imagine the informarion finding its way into the hands of local police and into court rooms there by biasing and ruining trial proceddings. I understand that rules of evidence say that illegally obtained information must be supressed. However, since we have yet to determine the legality of the program is not possible to justify it as legally collected information? I think so and I don’t like that. This has grave consequences for our justice system.

Please do something. Thank you.