As I posted last week there’s been a slight uproar about the NSA’s efforts to aggregate all the phone call data in the US.  Simply put the NSA is trying to distinguish who is calling whom and how often in an effort to track terrorists by said patterns.  I also said that I didn’t think this would be such a contentious issue if the government had been transparent or forthcoming in its efforts.

Today I read this item on Boing Boing and another aspect of this argument crept into my dim little brain.  First an excerpt:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources. “It’s time for you to get some new cell phones, quick,” the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Here’s the question that this item caused to flicker in my head: if the government isn’t listening the contents of calls as they claim then how do they know who is making the call and who is receiving it?  If you call my house you could be talking to any one of five people who live here or any number of guests we have over.  If you call my cell phone you may not talk to me;  if the phone is lying around the house any one could pick it up and say hello.

While looking at cell phone records gives you an idea of who is probably talking to whom you just can’t know for sure unless you’re listening to the actual contents of the call.  But because our government has created an environment of guilty until proven innocent we are instictively loathe to give them even that level of access to records of our activities.

As a follow up to the NSA story the results of a survey were released showing that about two thirds of Americans had no problem with this kind of data collection if it helped fight terrorism.  I suspect that is becuase most people don’t feel they have anything to hide.  But how would they feel if they knew there was a possibility that their daughter, who was home for the summer from college, had a boyfriend living in a group home and unbeknownst to him he had a roommate who had links to a terror cell (however tangential).  The daughter’s numerous calls to a number with known terrorist connections raises a red flag and all of the sudden mom and dad have to deal with federal agents calling their employers with some very pointed questions.

I have a feeling their opinions might change.