A Dirty Secret About Phone Records

A top story today - the NSA has been keeping records of US phone calls. They know who you called but they were not listening to the conversations.

The dirty secret about phone calls is that this is nothing new. The phone company has kept these records for years, especially for moble phones. That's how the NSA can get the records in the first place. The phone companies have been selling these records to various agencies.

On occasion, ARI (Advanced Research) has done work for municipalities, banks, mortgage and insurance companies, private companies, foreign governments, law enforcement, even the FBI

A major customer is the debt collection industry.

What's more, Europe keeps these records, too, and I mean the governments, not the phone companies. This is just an example of Bush being more like the French.

Update - I nearly forgot - what would people say if they found out that Bush and the NSA were keeping video tape records of all of the subways ad most of the sidewalks? The British have been doing this in London for years. That's how they spotted the subway bombers so quickly. They had them on tape.