Wired magazine has published all the info on AT&T and how it's been helping the NSA spy on us via our phone records and across "the entire internet". (I'm not linking directly to Wired because they seem to be getting overwhelmed by traffic right now. The link to Wired is in the article. They are very brave because Attorney General Gonzalez has threatened to put journalists in jail over this.

Meanwhile Business Week is reporting that the government has been bypassing privacy laws by buying data wholesale from private companies.

This is not about protecting us from terrorists. This is about creating a massive database which can be used and abused for all sorts of reasons, like keeping political enemies in check and staying in power.

What the companies seem to do as well is hire a company to sell info to the companies selling to the government so that they can say they never sold info to the government and the government can get around those pesky privacy laws. It's a win-win!

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_22/b3986068.htm