On Wednesday June 3, 2009 U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker dismissed the lawsuits against the nation’s telecoms for participation in the drag-net electronic surveillance program that captured untold riches about who we all really are. Your every credit card purchase, text message, phone call, website visited and email sent were potentially harvested by these companies in the name of protecting us from terrorism. The unconstitutional telco warrantless wiretaps are now RULE OF LAW.

Yet one cannot help but imagine the value of possessing this data. With a large enough sample, such data can be mined with supercomputers and cloud computing to provide fairly accurate profiles for nearly every citizen. By ranking these profiles using psychological personality traits, one could highlight groups such as “free thinkers with potential networking capability who are 18-35″ or “religious, high earners with families of more than four children who fill prescriptions for STD medication”.  The potential abuses are enormous, the data is literally who we are on a day to day basis.

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On Tuesday February 12, 2008 the Senate approved telco amnesty, legalized and then expanded President Bush’s Secret Spy Program. When the bill is enacted, your email, website, phone calls and any other digital communication will be unprotected.

Senators Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut have argued that the plan effectively rewarded phone companies by providing them with legal insulation for actions that violated longstanding law and their own privacy obligations to their customers. “This is a dramatic restructuring” of surveillance law, said Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department intelligence lawyer who represents several telecommunication companies. “And the thing that’s so dramatic about this is that you’ve removed the court review. There may be some checks after the fact, but the administration is picking the targets.” LICHBLAU, Eric (2008), Bush Presses House to Approve Bill on Surveillance, The New York Times, [13 Feb 2008]

Considering the severity of this news and its impact on our civil liberties, I took the time to review how this story of critical importance has been reported on by some of the major news organizations. What I found was surprising. Only two news sources had mention of this article on their homepage using a headline that accurately reflects the event. Five sources had misleading headlines, Reuters even titled their article “Bush opposes temporary extension of spy program” and then proceeded report how the bill passed the Senate. Eight news sources had no mention whatsoever of the story. List below.

New York Times – “Senate Vows to Expand Spy Powers”
Wired – “Senate Approves Telecom Amnesty, Widens Spying”

Reuters – “Bush opposes temporary extension of spy program”
BBC News – “Bush warns Congress on wiretaps”
USA Today – “Bush prods House on surveillance”
AOL News – “Bush Presses House on Surveillance Bill”
Yahoo News – “Bush presses House on surveillance Bill”

Washington Post – No Mention
Fox News – No Mention
CBS News – No Mention
Chicago Tribune – No Mention
CNN – No Mention
MSNBC – No Mention
New York Post – No Mention
Bloomberg – No Mention

Meanwhile, on nearly every news source mentioned above the lead story was…

Clemens and McNamee battle over steroid use.