As Eugene Robinson Says So Correctly, "We're ALL Terrorist Suspects Now"

This is a must-read which originally appeared in the Washington Post:

At least now we know that the Bush administration’s name for spying on Americans without first seeking court approval — the “terrorist surveillance program’’ — isn’t an exercise in Orwellian doublespeak after all. It’s just a bald-faced lie.

Oh, and at least now the Senate will have a few questions to ask Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the man George W. Bush has named to head the CIA, at his confirmation hearings.

While Hayden was running the super-secret National Security Agency, according to a report Thursday in USA Today, the NSA began collecting comprehensive records of telephone calls made by “tens of millions of Americans.’’ If your service is provided by AT&T, Verizon or BellSouth, according to the newspaper, this means your phone calls — all the calls you’ve made since late 2001. Of the major phone companies, only Qwest reportedly declined to cooperate.

The allegation, which the president refused to confirm or deny, is not that the spooks are actually listening in as you call home to check on the kids or talk to the bank about refinancing your mortgage. Rather, the idea is to be able to look at a given phone number — yours, let’s say — and see all the other numbers that you called over a given period of time, or that called you.

No names are attached to the numbers. But a snoopy civilian with Internet access can match a name with a phone number, so imagine what the government can do.

You’ll recall that when it was revealed last year that the NSA was eavesdropping on phone calls and reading e-mails without first going to court for a warrant, the president said his “terrorist surveillance program’’ targeted international communications in which at least one party was overseas, and then only when at least one party was suspected of some terrorist involvement. Therefore, no one but terrorists had anything to worry about.

Not remotely true, it turns out, unless tens of millions of Americans are members of al-Qaida sleeper cells — evildoers who cleverly disguise their relentless plotting as sales calls, gossip sessions and votes for Elliott on “American Idol.’’ (One implication, by the way, is that the NSA is able to know who got voted off “Idol’’ before Ryan Seacrest does.)