Me: “I can’t talk to you right now.”
John Doe: “Why?”
Me: “You know why; Bush has ALL of our phone records, of ALL of us. Not just THEM, but US. And, without any search warrants.”
John Doe: “What do you mean, not just them?”
Me: “You know, the people with Arabic-sounding names, or wearing turbans or whatever. He has EVERYBODY’s phone records. Yours. Mine. The blue-haired ladies who adore him.”
John Doe: “Isn’t that illegal?”
Me: “Well, yes, according to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Congress passed three decades ago, giving phone records Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
John Doe: “Well, can’t you e-mail me what you wanted to tell me?”
Me: “I’ve got dial-up; it goes over phone lines.”
John Doe: “What about e-mailing from the office?”
Me: “T1 broadband goes over phone lines too.”
John Doe: “But is this really that serious? Bush Administration spokespeople are saying names and addresses have been deleted from the records the phone companies supplied.”
Me: “Deleting names and addressses mean nothing. I could Google those phone numbers and find names in a flash. Even older people who aren’t computer-savvy have used criss-cross phone directories to do back-searches to find people’s and businesses’ names.
“Second, do you really believe BushCo? Those weapons of mass destruction are still missing more than three years later, right? And Vice President Cheney has been discovered for pushing for even more spying on Americans than this.
“Besides, the Administration has already lied about this. Here’s what Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claimed a month when before Congress, specifically the House Judiciary Committee:
“Congressman Gerald Nadler: ‘Number two, can you assure us that there is no warrantless surveillance of calls between two Americans within the United States?’
“Gonzales: ‘That is not what the president has authorized. …’
“Nadler: ‘But you’re not doing that deliberately?’
“Gonzales: ‘That is correct.’”
John Doe: “But, don’t you think that Bush still rates high on trust? Don’t you think people think that actions like this are at worst overzealousness with good intentions, rather than some quasi-tyrannical attempt to run roughshod over our vaunted privacy rights? After all, he’s no Bill Clinton as far as trust, right?”
Me: “Well, speaking of that, you are correct he is no Bill Clinton. A new CNN poll, asking about presidential honesty, had the public favoring Clinton over Bush, 46-41.”
John Doe: “Sounds like you had a pretty busy time Googling and elsewhere on the Internet. Speaking of Google, I had some stuff to do on the ’Net myself.”
Me: “Remember, Internet access as well as e-mail goes over the telephone lines, unless you have cable Internet. Your static Internet Protocol traces to your computer.
“Got any websites you’ve been to recently you don’t want Bush and Company to know about? And no, I’m not necessarily talking about pornography or something like that.
“Been shopping for divorce lawyers online? Bankruptcy lawyers? Starting to get the drift?”
John Doe: “Hmm, maybe I need to be just a little more careful.”
Me: “And people need to be more proactive consumers, too
“I had been looking at upgrading from dialup to broadband Internet access for my house. As the only two options are ATT/Yahoo and Verizon, no thanks. As soon as Working Assets or some other populist organization, which already offers cell phone service, can find a way to get broadband, shielded in some way from AT&T or Verizon eyeballs, for sale, then I’ll look at the switch.”
John Doe: “It’s a good thing that the Bush White House isn’t connected to that criminal vote-buying Jack Abramoff, isn’t it?”
Me: “Are you talking about the White House claiming that Secret Service visitor logs show he was only at the White House twice? Well, the Secret Service is intimidated, whitewashed, incompetent or lying.
“Those two visits don’t include three other visits to which the White House has already fessed up to. Including the May 9, 2001, visit where Smilin’ Jack charged two of his clients $25,000 for the privilege of a White House lunch.”
John Doe: “But surely these incidents aren’t part of a larger culture of corruption, are they?”
Me: “I hate to disappoint you, but the latest incident has Dallas connections. Cabinet Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson, from Dallas, told a real estate group that he had cancelled a contract with a developer after the developer started criticizing Bush.”
John Doe: “Sounds like you had a busy day online.”
Me: “Well, I’m sure somebody already knows that.”
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