This story jumped out at me from Google News, and I clicked on it before checking to see the issuing source. Just because it was Fox News did not make me disbelieve it, though that is enough to raise flags and be cautious. But seeing that it was under Brit Hume’s byline was enough to turn my BS detectors on full-blast. And sure enough, Hume was shoveling it fast and deep.

Did USA Today Bury Key Piece of Information About the NSA?

Today’s front page USA Today story on the National Security Agency’s database of information on domestic phone calls reports that the agency “reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans.

Not until page five, however, does the paper report the following: “Phone customers’ names, addresses and other personal information are not being collected as part of this program.”

Hume makes it sound like USA Today was trying to blow the story out of proportion, that the NSA was involved in anonymous collection of telephone data, and that people’s identities–and therefore privacy–were being protected. In all fairness, Hume wasn’t the only one putting forth this knowing lie. But a lie it was.

I mean, this is something so elementary, it’s amazing to think that Hume and others are trying to sell it. Look at it: the NSA has your phone records tied to your phone number. Supposedly, without your name and address, they have no way of knowing who made what calls to whom.

Feel better?

Of course not. Because anyone with an IQ over 60 knows that names and phone numbers can easily be matched. Hell, most people could do it with a computer-based phone directory, and it’s a good bet that the NSA has a pretty good computerized phone directory.

Not to mention the fact that if the NSA really didn’t have a way to connect numbers and names, then what the hell good would this database be, anyway?

In fact, from just reading Hume’s article, it sounds like USA Today was being deceptive by even mentioning the baloney about names and addresses not being collected. But it just seems that way, because Hume intentionally cut out the very next sentence in the USA Today story:

Phone customers’ names, addresses and other personal information are not being collected as part of this program. The agency, however, has the means to assemble that sort of information, if it chooses to do so.

So Hume’s “gotcha” on USA Today is nothing more than a blatant, knowing lie, an attempt to make it seem like the NSA and the Bush administration are being harmless when he knows damned well otherwise. And this guy is supposed to be a network anchor. Edward R. Murrow is spinning in his grave.