Speak up! I can't hear you.

There is a technical term for those who believe that they are entitled to privacy under the 4th amendment to the US Constitution prohibition against unlawful search and seizure and the 5th amendment protection against self-incrimination. That technical term is...WRONG!

According to an article in Bloomberg News, (http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-06/nsa-said-to-collect-millions-of-verizon-phone-records.ht...);
"
The Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee defended a secret Obama administration program collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. residents, saying it was a useful tool to combat terrorism, even as other members of Congress condemned the surveillance as an intrusion on innocent Americans. The lawmakers confirmed the existence of a classified court order compelling Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) to provide data on its customers’ calls, continuing a George W. Bush administration surveillance policy that sparked a national controversy. The U.K.-based Guardian newspaper reported last night that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was granted a court order in April requiring Verizon to provide the National Security Agency with information about calls inside the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries on a daily and “ongoing” basis. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the panel’s top-ranking Republican, told reporters this morning that the surveillance was legal and that they had been kept informed of it. The order obtained by the Guardian, dated April 25, lasts three months and was a regular renewal of the legal authorization, which has been going on for seven years, Chambliss said. "

I imagine if they are doing it to Verizon then there is some double secret court order allowing the same thing to AT&T and others. This is way, WAYYY out of hand. The amount of legally protected liberty, in the US, has now fallen to levels of China.

They are collecting HUGE amounts of data (or "metadata") with no probable cause or suspicion. This is abuse simply in the name of abuse. Are my calls being collected, probably.

This is persecution on a systematic and frighteningly massive level.

A copy of the "Top Secret Intelligence court order" obtained by the Guardian newspaper in the UK can be found on this web site; http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order .

It tends to make the NSA appear to be our version of the old East German STASI.

Recent Supreme Court decisions further undermine the Constitutional guarantees we believed to be our birthright. http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2011/05/17/supreme-court-erodes-4th-amendment-protections-ease... is a link to a Forbes story about the Supreme Court decision allowing police to enter your home without a warrant. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-dna-20130605,0,5053220.story is a Chicago Tribune editorial praising the Supremem Court decision to allow collection of DNA samples from arrestees without their consent.

Collecting all data for all citizens for public authorities like the Police is definitely Police state stuff.

"When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny."
— Thomas Jefferson (attributed to Jefferson)

The fences are not for your protection when the guns are pointing in.