Warrantless Wiretapping Program Started Before 9/11

I don't even know how to begin to respond to this.

As you probably know, 9/11 is one of the things used to justify the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. Well now, there's a news report out that says that the NSA contacted AT&T about starting up this program months before 9/11.

June 30 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.

The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages.

``The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. ``This undermines that assertion.''

It's getting rather obvious now that this program is not about preventing another 9/11, or stopping terrorists, or finding Bin Laden, or anything of the sort. I'm not inclined to buy into any of those excuses at all anymore.

This, of course, begs the question: if this isn't being done to stop terrorists, or in reaction to 9/11, then why was this program started? What is the reason? What is the goal here? What benefit would the people in government get from having all of these call records at their disposal?

Pioneer Groundbreaker

The NSA initiative, code-named ``Pioneer Groundbreaker,'' asked AT&T unit AT&T Solutions to build exclusively for NSA use a network operations center which duplicated AT&T's Bedminster, New Jersey facility, the court papers claimed. That plan was abandoned in favor of the NSA acquiring the monitoring technology itself, plaintiffs' lawyers Bruce Afran said.

The NSA says on its Web site that in June 2000, the agency was seeking bids for a project to ``modernize and improve its information technology infrastructure.'' The plan, which included the privatization of its ``non-mission related'' systems support, was said to be part of Project Groundbreaker.

I think the truth about the program is starting to come out now, day by day, and it seems that AT&T is showing itself to be one of, if not the, real villains behind all of this.

Why, oh why did AT&T go along with this? Why did they cooperate in something so heinous, especially before 9/11? Didn't they care about their customers at all?

Forgive me for the melodrama, but this is making me feel sick.