Conference Call of the Century

In the timeline of Orwell’s 1984, we are probably living through the sinister stretches of 1978. Perhaps the legality of the Bush administration’s call-logging activities, hand in hand with the shadowy National Security Agency (NSA), is above suspicion. The US Supreme Court does clarify that call logs are legal, while wiretapping without a warrant would be considered a breach of privacy. And with over 63% of the American population seeing little fault in call-logging for the sake of the proverbial War on Terror, one may wonder exactly what all the fuss is about.

Personally, what worries me is this administration’s eagerness to circumvent any larger representative body before taking executive decisions that, in effect, treat American residents as the potential criminals. It makes suspects of Bin Laden and Mrs. Baker in a single grand sweep of covert activity. Whether it is the torture of suspected terrorists or the logging of phone calls, the justification is Code Red, and the rhetoric is the “Trust me” subtext than won Bush the second term in office. At the risk of being a conspiracy theorist, where do the NSA’s activities on American soil stop? Will they be content with creating statistics from millions of call logs, or will they begin placing the ear against the conference call of the century?