Friday, October 10, 2008

Maybe “Ohh Baby” Is Code For Something

To all the wingnut assholes who thought we just had to give the government these super new powers to eavesdrop on Americans’ telephone calls or else we’re-all-gonna-die-OMG-OMG! (yes, Robert Novak, I’m talking to you), I hope you’re proud of yourselves:
Adrienne Kinne, a former U.S. Army Reserves Arab linguist, told ABC News the NSA was listening to the phone calls of U.S. military officers, journalists and aid workers overseas who were talking about "personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism."

David Murfee Faulk, a former U.S. Navy Arab linguist, said in the news report that he and his colleagues were listening to the conversations of military officers in Iraq who were talking with their spouses or girlfriends in the United States.

According to Faulk, they would often share the contents of some of the more salacious calls stored on their computers, listening to what he called "phone sex" and "pillow talk."

Both Kinne and Faulk worked at the NSA listening facility at Fort Gordon, Georgia. They told ABC that when linguists complained to supervisors about eavesdropping on personal conversations, they were ordered to continue transcribing the calls.

Great.

I never understood why a group of people whose political philosophy is based on the idea that we can’t trust the government to do anything at all would nonetheless maintain that we could trust the government with something as totalitarian as eavesdropping on our phone calls and reading our e-mails.

It makes no sense.