= new reply since forum marked as read
it seems the cell connections weren't as good a few years ago and you could hear some strange clicking noises. We'd joke about someone listening in so we'd make terrible comments about Newt just to see if we could make the feds come to the door. 
Who cares? You don't care that you are being spied on even though you are innocent? 
Wish I were only kidding - read this oldie but goody: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-05-20-terror-database_x.htm?csp=34 ; see, related Cong. Research Service Study: http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL32536.pdf?
'Terrorism quotient' records spark suspicions about Matrix
NEW YORK (AP) — Before helping to launch the criminal information project known as Matrix, a database contractor gave U.S. and Florida authorities the names of 120,000 people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists — sparking some investigations and arrests.
The "high terrorism factor" scoring system also became a key selling point for the involvement of the database company, Seisint Inc., in the Matrix project.
Public records obtained by The Associated Press from several states show that Justice Department officials cited the scoring technology in appointing Seisint sole contractor on the federally funded, $12 million project.
Seisint and the law enforcement officials who oversee Matrix insist that the terrorism scoring system ultimately was kept out of the project, largely because of privacy concerns.
However, new details about Seisint's development of the "terrorism quotient," including the revelation that authorities apparently acted on the list of 120,000, are renewing privacy activists' suspicions about Matrix's potential power.
already.
Maybe, that's exactly what makes people like us a perceived threat? If so, this country is surely doomed, as there are no real enemies more dangerous than the paranoids running our own government. I'd like to still believe that isn't quite the case. But, I could be wrong.
Response to blueamy66 (Reply #4)
it was revealed that Bush was using the Telecoms to spy on the American people. It was against the law then but not to worry, Congress under Bush fixed that law and made it legal. Democrats of course were outraged because they didn't understand, as the Republicans were trying to tell them to no avail, that 'if we had nothing to hide we had nothing to worry about'.
Now we are learning that the Republicans, Bush/Cheney et al were right after all.
I remember my right wing adversaries telling me just what you just did, that why should I care if the NSA was listening to me ordering a pizza? I thought they just didn't get the implications of a Government spying on its own people.
But thanks for straightening me out, and my apologies to all the Republicans I attacked back them for trying so hard to tell me the same thing.
because it's hard to tell what is a big joke like the government spying on the people, and what is not. I'm still where I was when Bush started this destruction of our rights. But then I'm stubborn about these things.
"What time are you picking me up for the anti-war/anti NSA demonstration?"
"I love you and miss you, my closeted/married lesbian lover."
"How are my pot plants?"
"We're going to picket; Wanna go?"
"My law suit against the government is in trouble. I'll need 10,000 dollars or I'll have to drop it."
They have my address! The Government has my ADDRESS!!!! America is doomed!
"Well, we already knew he was into the kinky porn, so this is no surprise."
"Mark it down in our book of future-use intelligence..." (Ominous music, darkening cubicle...)
does anyone think this is really limited to Verizon? AT&T even set them up with offices to do so.
--> I was told once by my parents to watch what I said and wrote because the government could pose a threat.....
They were living and working in Iran at the time... prior to the Shah's overthrow. 
We've now moved on to "voluntary" door to door searches by the police.
"...Since the Patriot Act was first enacted, lawmakers have authorized extension after extension, refusing to make any meaningful changes to the law. This is despite the fact that — according to Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) — there are two versions of the Patriot Act: one that the public sees, and a secret interpretation that the government keeps to itself. Senator Wyden has stated, “When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry.” Furthermore, since its passage, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General has repeatedly found widespread blatant abuse of the statute. Yet, earlier this year, Congress passed a four-year extension of expiring Patriot Act provisions, which are now set to expire on June 1, 2015..."
in "Body of Secrets." Then again in 2009 in "The Shadow Factory." And in numerous posts on the internet. And we first learned about he NSA's existence in 1983 in "The Puzzle Palace," a book the NSA tried to keep from being published.
From 2011:
From 2012:
Pretty much I've assumed for years NSA has recorded every phone conversation, every email post, every DU post or reply I've made or done for years.
Hello NSA
Keeping them safe from the Darrell Issa. Or keeping us safe from terra.
Or something like that.
Response to trumad (Original post)
that said, they know so much anyway... that... oh never mind... USA, USA, USA... we live in the freest, happiest country in the world... and nothing you tell us will mar that.
(And some will need this... )
This is getting so kafkaesque and orwellian.
