insomnomaniac

Nothing from nothing leaves nothing

But you gotta have something, right? That seems to be the mindset of the anti-Bushies in the media and on Capitol Hill.

Let me make this simple for the morons out there who are just aghast at the "revelation" that the government is collecting lists (LISTS, not content, not names or addresses, just LISTS OF NUMBERS) of their phone calls:

YOU DO NOT OWN THESE NUMBERS, NOR THE RECORDS OF THE TIMES AND DATES ON WHICH THEY WERE USED!

It's just that simple. Your phone numbers are not "yours." They are merely leased to you, on loan if you will, for as long as you choose to pay your bill to the companies that do own them! Think about it. If you move, say from Boston to North Carolina, do you get to KEEP your phone number? Even if you have a digital phone service that lets you try to "keep" your original number, it may not be able to allow you to because of pesky little things called area codes. Either way, you are not the owner of the information.

And why is it perfectly OK, no problem, not a violation of privacy and to be expected without question that your phone company collects "lists" of your phone calls, but not OK that the government have the same information? Why is the government so much less trustworthy than Verizon or Bell South? Or let me put it another way: When was the last time the government called you at the dinner hour citing some pattern of behavior of yours and offering to sell you a product based on that pattern?

I'm waaaaaaaaiting............

This whole thing makes me so angry. I don't know who I'm more angry at, the Democrats who insult our intelligence on an hourly basis by pretending to be all outraged and horrified that something (they knew about for years and started when their boy was in office) is going on, or the MSM who place this "news" above (we're talking waaaaaay above) the news that--once again--that lunatic in charge of Iran threatened Israel and called it a "totalitarian state." Shouldn't the headline in all the papers have read: "Pot calls kettle black: What else is knew?"

(Wait a sec...That could apply to pretty much the entire newspaper...)

Why is it that Americans willy-nilly hand over or allow collection of the most personal of information by all manner of commercial interests, but get all queasy when it's the government doing the collecting?

Do you have a grocery store loyalty card? CVS card? Hallmark Gold Crown Card? Blockbuster card? Do you even know what these things are FOR? Do you get that those companies have on record (and available for sale to any and ALL who'll pay for the information, regardless of the way they plan to use it) everything you've ever bought from them? Why should I be OK with the notion that Harris Teeter keeps a record of what kind of Tampons I buy (I, me, the person with my name, remember, they have all this attached to my NAME AND ADDRESS), but the government shouldn't know that my phone number called another phone number, without my name and address attached?

It's absurd the amount of information we give away for free, to be sold by the receiver who will never give us a dime for it in return. But God forbid the government wants to build a reliable database with which to search out patterns of calls in order to identify possible terrorist activities. No, that would actually be a worthwhile use of that data, can't have that. But if the President wants to send us all another ten catalogs we didn't ask for, for worthless merchandise we don't want and don't need, killing entire forests, wasting postage, fuel and other sources of energy in the process, NO PROBLEM!

I'm so disgusted with how stupid we have all become, really. If I were in the military, I'd have to seriously wonder who the hell I was fighting and possibly dying for (i.e., people too brain-dead to deserve it).

Posted by insomnomaniac at May 12, 2006 9:15 AM | TrackBack