This:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

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.

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

…

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers’ names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA’s domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

is not about terrorism. It is about the creation of a surveillance state. They are keeping calls from you to your mom, to your doctor, to your rabbi, to your psychiatrist, to your local chapter of the NRA. They are tracking who you talk to and when you talk to them. They are intruding themselves into your life in the same manner that dictators do. Every time you make a phone call, a record is being kept for essentially ever, and that record can then be used later to track your activities and gain tons of privet information by cross referencing it with other databases of information. Use a phone, and the government is going to take away your privacy, in violation of the FISA law.

Bush has turned the government on its own people. It is now standing over your shoulder, noting when you call and who you call and storing that information for use later, as it sees fit, when it sees fit, with no apparent oversight or regard for the law or the Constitution or even basic truth:

“The privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities,” he said. “Our efforts are focused on Al Qaeda and their known associates.”

Tens of millions of Americans have had their privacy violated, their lives dissected through their phone records by the government. How many people really believe that tens of millions of Americans are associates of Al Qaeda? This is the slippery slope we are hurtling down. This is a warning of Big Brother, it is Big Brother. These are the tactics of a police state and they are not theoretical consequences of policy or decisions; Bush and the GOP are using them and defending them today.

The question is simple: do you want to live in something like a more efficient Soviet Union, or do you want to live in America?