Our rights are fading.

I want to begin by openly stating something my readers already know, I support our troops with every fiber of my being and as a combat vet a part of me dies each time a soldier is killed in action. I am sixty years of age, but if permitted I would rejoin my brothers and sisters at a moments notice and serve my country once again.

Yesterday I commented on the latest news from Washington and the largest database of telephone information ever compiled and turned over to the NSA. I feel strongly as an American citizen that I have certain rights and protection that must never be violated and old as I am the warrior within me would still give his life to insure these rights remain to every American.

A line was once drawn into American soil by our founding fathers as not only an act of defiance against a foreign nation upon our soil, but also an act of personal liberties that must not ever be given up by the people to anyone, for any reason, ever again. Our nation is getting closer and closer each day to removing a large portion of these liberties and it frightens me to death.

The telephone-monitoring situation bothers me because as a computer consultant I know the NSA had another option in which to monitor for phrases. They could have simply created an algorithm monitoring key words and phrases and if detected that line locked onto for further investigation. This form of electronic surveillance still crosses the line, but in a manner that can be understood and even approved. The NSA has the nations most brilliant computer personnel and they would have had little problem creating one. The very fact that the recorded conversations of every American have been given to the NSA and turned into the largest database ever created not only crosses the line it wipes it away from the soil in which it was drawn.

Ladies and Gentlemen do not forget for one moment that this is the NSA we are taking about, do not think for one moment that they do not have the technology to backtrack and obtain the telephone numbers and names and locations of the American citizens within this database. That form of thinking is dangerous because they can and would do so if ordered by executive order or act of congress.

I see the constitutional rights of American citizens slowly fading into the horizon and being done so in the name of war and terrorism so Americans will agree with the loss and this is wrong. We have lost enough of our rights and we must draw our invisible line into the soil and say enough is enough. We must inform our elected officials and congressional representatives that this must stop. We must do this before it is too late and we are unable to do so.