Don't tie hands of security forces

It is reasonable to be afraid of one's own government. There is plenty of evidence of malfeasance and foolishness and even outright skulduggery in the halls of power.

It is also reasonable to be afraid of terrorists. There is plenty of evidence that al-Qaida intends to kill as many Americans as possible, with or without cause (the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were unprovoked after all).

Of course, sometimes these two fears come into conflict because it is the U.S. government that is in charge of protecting us from terrorist attacks.

We must therefore at some point decide if we are more afraid of the terrorists or our own government.

Some people think the government is the greater danger, and they seek to handcuff government power to protect us from excesses of secrecy and intrusion. That, of course, means they are also protecting the terrorists from those same things. We assume therefore that these folks don't consider the terrorists much of a threat.

But most Americans would disagree.

Most would be outraged if a murderous terror attack were to succeed as a result of the government's protective agencies being stymied by over-regulation. If a moderate-sized U.S. city were hit by a suitcase nuclear bomb, with casualties above 100,000, and it turned out that the plot could have been crushed by U.S. authorities if they had been able to "connect the dots," then it is safe to assume everyone - Democrats and Republicans - would be demanding to know why the plot was missed.

And that, in short, is why it is absolutely essential for the National Security Agency to be given adequate freedom to seek out intelligence that will reveal the nefarious plans of the al-Qaida terrorists. Having access to the phone records of Americans is one very simple part of the plan to keep us safe.

Despite misrepresentations by politicians and some in the media, note that the government is not listening to your phone calls; it is merely trying to build up a database that reflects calling patterns.

Then, when our military or spies are lucky enough to track down an al-Qaida terrorist, we can use his cell phone to help pinpoint his co-conspirators and possibly foil an attack.

This works in several ways. Possibly, the terrorist is not aware he is under surveillance and continues to make calls on his cell phone. Each call he makes to the United States will lead to a potential suspect. Possibly, the terrorist's phone will be captured after he is dead, and the call list in the phone will provide leads to his co-conspirators. Or possibly, all our spy agency will have is the terrorist's own cell phone number. If so, we could still do a search for that cell phone's number in the phone records database and see if it was called from any phones in the United States.

That would be a good thing to know, wouldn't it?

And you couldn't get that kind of information with a warrant because obviously you don't know which of the millions of phones in the United States might have been used to call the terrorist. But with the database and high-tech computers you can find that out in a matter of seconds.

When you know which phones were used to call the terrorist or were called by the terrorist, you could also instantly check the phone records of those phone customers and see what other numbers they called. With a computer program, you could quickly search through the phone records of all those numbers, too, looking for patterns that would point to an al-Qaida cell operating in the United States. If you were lucky, you might find someone calling a known nuclear technician or nerve gas expert. Then you would have a chance to stop the deaths of thousands of people.

We think that potential result should give Americans greater peace of mind than simply knowing that the government doesn't have access to their phone records.

After all, those phone records are not going to be used for any other criminal investigations. The government has plenty to worry about already without sorting through billions of phone records to track down polygamists or drug felons, much less to find out if you have a political belief that differs from the president's.

Besides, courts have long since ruled that such phone records are not shielded, and in any case the government already has detailed secret information about most of us in the form of IRS tax documents. We trust the government with our private data all the time, with the understanding that if our rights are violated, the government or its agents will be held accountable.

But we also trust the government to protect us, and that trust should be inviolable.

If the idea of Homeland Security is not an oxymoron, then we need to be able to track down the friends and allies of terrorists who live within our own borders. The NSA's ability to mine phone records for clues to terror networks is a vital part of that ability.

(VOTE IN OUR QUICK POLL at www.dailyinterlake.com to let us know if you think terrorism concerns justify the government's program of tracking U.S. phone records.)