Sure, the government might be collecting millions of phone records, and it's possible that phone companies cooperated with the program ( though they deny it, of course); that's no reason for Americans to get all riled up, right?

Right. According to some recent polls, more than half of Americans support the warrentless wiretapping program. They don't care that the government has a record of the people that they've spoken with over the phone. Nor do these people worry that, like cockroaches, if you spot one abuse of government authority, then there's probably a dozen FBI agents hiding under your fridge. We're okay with that. Even though other polls reveal that one in four Americans actually believe that they've been wiretapped.

The American people hate to be told what to do or what to think; but it's more than a little disturbing that Americans are now willing to shrug their shoulders and yawn when confronted with what is quite possibly an illegal attack against their rights. Or, perhaps, they try to get outraged about the massive invasion of privacy, but when they close their eyes they see the image of a plane flying into a building.

In spite of the fact that, if this program had been initiated back in 2001 it still wouldn't have prevented 9/11, warrentless wiretapping is apparently seen as an affirmative step towards fighting terrorism and protecting our country. Just like the Iraq war was supposed to make us safer. Just like the Homeland Security Administration was supposed to.

Collecting the phone records of millions of Americans is not going help us fight terror, and the NSA's wiretapping has a poor track-record as far as effectiveness is concerned in any case, but there's another issue here.

This recent piece by Bruce Schneier expresses the problems with surveillance very well. Frankly, any defense of privacy is a breath of fresh air nowadays, when privacy advocates who speaks out are likely to be tagged as a tin-foil-hat-wearing Pollyanna with something fiendish to hide.

As Schneier points out, information can be collected and stored for an indefinite period; over the course of a human life-time, there's really no telling who's going to have access to that information or what they're going to do with it. Certainly, regardless of how blameless and clean a person's life is, there are probably certain details that he or she would prefer not to be broadcast. We all go to the bathroom, bathe, masturbate, and say stupid things we wish we could take back in the privacy of our homes and over the telephone.

Isn't it bad enough that private companies have unprecedented access to your personal information? Or that criminals have proved tremendously adept at stealing "secure" information? What are the odds that all this private data that the governement is collecting is going to be completely safe? What are the odds that there won't be at least one rogue element in the government with access to it and a penchant for blackmail or posting information to the Internet?

We're not trying to tell those 52 or 60% of Americans what to think about government surveillance. We simply suggest considering the issue very carefully. Preferably every time you use the telephone, or the Internet, or buy pornography with a credit card.

-Parry Noyha