I'm taking a ninja class with the hopes of learning the 2-prong Yeti attack.

I find it humorous and appalling that the majority of Americans (according to Polls, of course) don't find the phone records database a bad idea. We don't want our records sold to corporations, spouses, private investigators, or criminals but we give the NSA the green light to build their database.

Really, people.

The government mentions "terrorists" and "its in our best security interest" and Americans tuck the tail between their legs and whine. Americans are becoming cowards.

Don't die.

Munkeying around is a serious business in which one needs to partake of daily, if not hourly.

Today, there's another spying plot uncovered: the NSA, along with most of the major communication providers, have been caught collecting the phone records. It's claimed no other information is given with the phone records, but a phone record by itself reveals identifying information (identity, address, relatives, friends, etc).

Mitch Ratcliffe thinks the whole operation is illegal. I agree. Domestic wiretapping of any sort needs a reason and a warrant. Domestic spying without Court approval smacks of Cold War tactics, which brought about such regulations in the first place. Ratcliffe also thinks customers should think of switching service. Unfortunately, only one major telecommunications company refused the NSA request. So, if you're able to get Qwest service, what are you waiting for?

Someone replying to Ratcliffe's article points out a statician's point of view on the whole idea. For example, let's suppose the data mining efforts on such a database is 99% effective (99% of the population of people with ties to terrorists will be caught, and 1% of the rest of the population will be dragged along for the ride).

Assumptions:
1. 300 million people live in America.
2. There's a 1% population with terrorist ties. That's 300.
3. Data mining is 99% effective.

The numbers come out thus:
1. 297 terrorist ties will be established.
2. 3 million false positives.
3. That's 3 million and 297 people that need to be investigated.

Take into account that nothing the government does is 99% effective and you've got some very large numbers on your hands.

Useless for national defense? Yep. So, one has to wonder what they really want all this data for.

Don't die.