It's for your own good!

PARTY LIKE IT'S 1984!

The National Security Agency has been collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top secret court order granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.  Under the terms of the order, the phone numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as are location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The FISA court order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compelled Verizon to provide the NSA with electronic copies of "all call detail records or telephony metadata created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls"  

But It's For Your Own Good

"Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it allows counter-terrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States," ~ said "a senior administration official"

The Senate Intelligence Committee

We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted Section 215 of the Patriot Act.  As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says. Senators Ron Wyden & Mark Udall

"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."  - Patrick Henry