You have no more right to privacy on telephone logs than you do for logs on a web server and they show pretty much the same kind of information. They show which address connected to which other address and when. In telco jargon, a phone number is also called an address.

What the paper has tried to do in this case is to make a subtle connection in people’s minds between addressing information and content but this very issue has long been decided by the Supreme Court. Pen register information is called that, by the way, because of the way old fashioned telephone switches recorded billing information. They used mechanical switches and a “pen register” made a recording of the originating phone number and each digit dialed when placing a call so the call could be billed.

This information does not involve listening for a conversation. It is akin to noting that a car with a certain license number entered a parking lot at one time and left another. It doesn’t prove who placed the call or what was said, it only says that phone was in use and dialed some other number. Many people can get access to your billing information. The content of those calls is, however, protected. They can not listen to a fully domestic call without a warrant.

This isn’t even news. It was news several years ago. It isn’t even really “leaking” anything since the entire argument was already gone over years ago. Basically, it’s nothing. It isn’t even whistle blowing. All it is, is button pushing.

Well so do large telemarketing companies. It doesn’t bother me for NSA to have a phone book that lists every single telephone in the country. You can assemble one yourself for well over 90% of all the phones in this country. It’s called The White Pages. You can obtain them from every telco electronically and put them all into a database if you want.

In fact, obtaining people’s phone bills is easier than it seems too. But even so, if NSA is looking at the calls being made by people here in this country who are talking to terrorists overseas, I have absolutely ZERO issue with it. If they weren’t looking into it, I would be upset.

…The question is, do you supporters of domestic data mining see a limit? Or is it “anything goes” when it comes to this president, and his “war on terror?”…

Like a wannabe standing by and hoping to be noticed, the USA Today copies the cool kids’ leaking national security information style, and adds to the information previously published by the NY Times.The National Security Agency has been secretly colle…

Catchy headline, eh? Who’s making the big move – the Democratic leadership? Breakaway Republicans? The Bush Administration?
Also, no, no, and no – just little ol’ me. I’ve had some thoughts percolating in my ever-expanding brain (…

It seems the NSA has been collecting data on the phone calls of millions of Americans, such as the numbers called and call duration — but not the calls’ contents — for some time now, and storing them in a massive database.
It appears …