phone records

The revelations about the caller-to-caller records being collected by the NSA aren't really too surprising, given the trends in privacy in the U.S. for over a decade. And its not like the data they're collecting isn't being done for legitimate reasons; even Fred Kaplan, a frequent critic of the Administration, admits there are valid reasons to have such a database, depending on how it is handled.

I guess my worry is not so much the fact that they have the info and how it is supposed to be used, but that an NSA employee may decide independently that they have reasons for illegally using the data that they consider more important than their oath of secrecy, much as Mary McCarthy used an ends-justifies-the-means rationale to rationalize revealing secret CIA programs to the Washington Post. Keep in mind, I remain of the opinion that Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen should have been executed for their activities & to serve as an example to others that national security is literally a matter of life and death. So, I worry that not being willing to make examples of them is a symptom of a larger culture of well-we-knew-you-took-this-oath-but-nobody-really-expected-you-to-keep-it at certain levels of the government.