NOT a scandal from the NSA

The news hit the front pages of America today like news of the sinking of the Maine.

"NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls" screams USA Today. "Congress Demands Phone Records Answers" according to AP.

It seems the National Security Agency has been monitoring patterns in domestic calling habits. Sounds dreadful, right? What an invasion of privacy, and all that sort of hoo-hah.

Well, not so fast.

The key passage in the USA Today story is the 2nd paragraph, quoted here:

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

This tells you all you need to know about what's going on.

No, the NSA is not listening to your phone calls.

No, the NSA is not making a detailed record of who you're calling or who calls you.

The NSA is looking for the normal pattern of domestic phone calls.

Folks, this is called "establishing a baseline".

The NSA will then look for significant deviations from this baseline and try to discern who amongst us is making credit card calls to a certain cave in Waziristan, asking to speak with Mr. Sama-Oay In-Ladin-Bay.

This is called, I believe, "signals intelligence" and it's been employed in one form or another since the first military telegram was sent in the 1800s.

There is nothing nefarious or Orwellian going on here.

The question for you, the average American, is this: Do you want your government to protect you from terrorism or not?

If this answer is "yes", then this is one of the ways they're going to do it.

If the answer is "no", well, that's fine too.

Just don't come bitching when something REALLY BAD happens on clear fall day in New York.

UPDATE: Nice to see the American public views this for what it is: A not-very-intrusive method of smoking out those who would use our infrastructure against us.