Do I think the NSA “wiretapping” is legal? Probably. Should it be legal? Maybe… Maybe not. Regardless of your opinion of the ethical/legal/moral implications of the “wiretapping”, you should agree with me that the response we’ve seen in the media and the outrage we’ve heard is ridiculous.

For one thing, it isn’t wiretapping. NSA simply took our phone records. The media has been implying that our enitre phone conversations have been recorded and forwarded to the NSA. In reality, the information is meerly the record of who called who, when, and for how long. The NSA wasn’t the first to get these records. Did you ever stop and ask yourself why they save this information in the first place? The telephone companies have been selling our records for years. But suddenly, NSA is the buyer. Only… they don’t pay cash. They just ask “nicely”.

What’s the difference? Advertisers profile us with spyware, with web bugs, and cookies. And for what purpose? To more effectively advertise. The NSA decides to collect similar information. And for what purpose? Hopefully, to protect us.

I’m not saying the NSA should have that information. But frankly, we can’t stop the “bad guys” (e.g. DoubleClick). If we aren’t stopping the “bad guys”, why should we stop the “good guys” (e.g. NSA… we hope)? Personally, I don’t think either parties should have our private information, but frankly, NSA has significantly more justification. I find it ridiculous that there is an uproar about the NSA’s use of our private information, and yet barely a peep is heard about the more aggregious use of our private information, by private corporations.