I wish I could say this was shocking, but it's really not. It makes you think twice about labeling people "conspiracy theorists" because if anyone had suggested a year ago that this was going on, they would have been called batshit crazy.
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
Read the rest here
Keep in mind that the guy who presided over all of this, General Michael Hayden, is Bush's pick to be the new Director of Central Intelligence.
They claim that the program does not actually listen to the phone calls, but that screams of a half-truth. I'm sure that it's technologically impossible to actually listen to an analyze the content of every call, but it's absurd to think that they don't use this data to pick out a subset of people to monitor constantly.
There's no doubt in my mind that there are more shocking revalations to come.
