The Top 10 Most Inaccurate and Exaggerated NSA Stories (So Far)

[JDPriestly]

105. They may be inaccuracies but the issue that concerns me is one that Obama has admitted -

that the NSA tracks our metadata.

It is fine to obtain the phone records as a part of a specific investigation.

But it is overly intrusive and a violation not just of the Fourth Amendment but of a number of other rights for the government to obtain the metadata of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.

It chills our right to free speech about political issues, about things like the environment, corporate bribery of our Congress and other political officials and many, many other things. It intrudes on our right of freedom of association because the government can see in our phone and internet and other electronic communication records with whom we associate, with whom we meet and talk and perhaps even in some cases get transcripts of our communications without a warrant.

It isn't the arguably misleading information that concerns me. I don't care about how many millions of calls or how many hundreds of thousands of calls are intercepted at the cables. Those details don't concern me. I don't need to understand that degree of technical information to know that if the government is looking at my telephone bills, they know what church I belong to, what civic organizations and clubs I belong to, who my family members are, where I shop, who repairs my car . . . . They know where I go to have my hair done and when, what doctors i visit. They know everything about me. Now, in my case, I assume they don't care. i'm not a political leader. My personal life is uncontroversial I think. But I care about the principle of it. It is not right that the government is tracking people through their metadata. That must stop. It chills our exercise of every right we have under the Constitution.

And it especially chills the rights of journalists, lawyers, judges, members of legislative bodies at all levels of government. It is just appalling.