House of Eratosthenes

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont (D) gave a speech (link goes to video which requires sitting through a commercial) about what an awful thing it is that the NSA has been collecting phone records. Gosh, wow, he made a really great point:

Now, are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with Al Qaeda? If that’s the case, we’ve really failed in any kind of a war on terror.

Huh. So simply compiling a database that includes someone’s phone records, is what you do when they “are involved with Al Qaeda.” I wonder where he got that from. I mean, it’s a fair question to ask, since his outrage depends squarely on this premise.

What does that all-important Will Of The People say? Let’s take a look…

45. It’s been reported that the National Security Agency has been collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans. It then analyzes calling patterns in an effort to identify possible terrorism suspects, without listening to or recording the conversations. Would you consider this an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?

And the answer is, 63% find this acceptable, 35% find it unacceptable, 2% have no opinion.

41% of his find it “strongly acceptable” and 24% of us find it “strongly unacceptable.”

+++YAWN+++

I’m really interested in that “net unacceptable” figure of 35%. Let’s see, where have I seen that number before…ah yes, about a month ago 35% was proof of what a suck-ass job President Bush was doing, because that was his approval rating. Granted that it’s slipped a few notches since then — but the point is, it wasn’t that long ago I was being told if only 35% of us agree on something, this is ironclad proof that seven out of twenty of us are wombat-rabies bollywonkers crazy and don’t know what the hell we’re talking about. So I guess the shoe’s on the other foot.

Well, the minority can be right. It’s been right before. So convince me, Sen. Leahy and those of you who sympathize with him. I call a dry cleaning shop. I call a relative. I call a per-minute-toll sex line. If I make these calls, then those calls are matters of fact. They may be matters of public record, too…or I guess they aren’t, but if they are I don’t give a rat’s ass.

But that’s me, I guess someone else wants to keep their “phone calls private.” That sounds pretty reasonable…but then again, it sounds like people want to keep the audio content of those phone calls private. The fact that they made the call…are there people who think this is privileged information? Are there people who consider it critically important that it stays privileged? They make a phone call, and they want to keep it under wraps that they made the call? Or that they got it?

Uh…who are these people, exactly? Who are these thirty-five-percenters? What have they been doing, since this faux-scandal came out, to acquire this privacy shelter they crave so much? Persuade the phone companies to come out with new privacy policies? Go shopping for new cell phones? Avoid making phone calls they otherwise would have made? I’d like to know.

Update: I have been hearing a great deal about how this is “the largest database ever assembled in the world,” in the words of an unnamed source who works for I-don’t-know-what. Wow, that’s an important statement. Does it mean the servers on which they database is physically housed, draw the greatest number of horsepower ever used to power a single database? Does it means the byte-for-byte size of the database exceeds that of any other database ever used? Does it mean it has more tables than any other database? More index definitions? More pages? More records? The most complicated data flow diagram? Or does it mean there are more authorized users capable of accessing this database, than any other database?

It’s an anonymous source, which means I’m unlikely to ever find out the answer to that question. Again…the outrage rests completely on how a statement like this can be interpreted, so this is an all-important question. Kind of odd how it’s unanswered and essentially unanswerable.

Update: This guy seems to think the poll cited here is a load of bull crap. Not sure I understand his argument. It seems to be along the lines of “I don’t like the result so I refuse to believe it.” Whatever.

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Leahy’s Logical LeapFriday, May 12th, 2006

Leahy’s Logical Leap
Friday, May 12th, 2006