[Government] No Such Agency

The NSA has been attempting to keep a database of every phonecall made to, from, or entirely within the United States since at least 2001. And they are doing it with the help of AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth.

The Bush Administration has halted the congressional investigation into illegal NSA wiretapping by refusing to grant security clearances to the Justice Department attorneys responsible for the investigation (Justice Department: "We are going to investigate you." NSA: "No you aren't, you can't, we're not going to give you clearance to know anything about what we are doing." Justice Department: "Okay." NSA: "Suck it."). The Bush administration even blocked Rep. Nancy Pelosi's attempt to find out which members of congress had been briefed on the program by classifying the list of their names (although Pelosi herself was likely briefed on much of these programs).

NSA whistleblower Russell Tice cannot blow the whistle to congress because the members of the House and Senate intelligence committees are not being given security clearance to hear his complaint.

Bush's nominee to head the CIA is the General who ran and defended all these illegal programs at NSA. The president apparently lied about it. The Attorney General may have perjured himself lied about it while not under oath before the house Judiciary committee.

Unchecked power of this kind is as great a threat to us as terrorism is. This is a an unprecedented threat to human rights. These illegal acts must cease, and the people responsible for them must be held accountable.

Oh, and some small props are due to Qwest, the only one of the major telecoms that didn't cave to the NSA.

UPDATE: BellSouth claims they didn't collude with the NSA.

UPDATE: Verizon too.