Let's face it. At least for some of you, your phone calls and emails are being reviewed by government officials who have significant leeway to spy on American citizens without any probable cause. Government spying on innocent Americans is an old story, as anyone familiar with the cold-war abuses can attest, but in the post-9/11 world, anything goes because ... it's a post 9/11 world.

The New York Times reported on June 17 that "The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said."

These concerns over widespread government surveillance have prompted some members of Congress to investigate. They may want to look into a new revelation from an unnamed government employee, according to the Times, "a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation."

Well, that is interesting. How come we didn't know this sooner? The story adds:

The agency appears to have tolerated significant collection and examination of domestic e-mail messages without warrants, according to the former analyst, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

He said he and other analysts were trained to use a secret database, code-named Pinwale, in 2005 that archived foreign and domestic e-mail messages. He said Pinwale allowed N.S.A. analysts to read large volumes of e-mail messages to and from Americans as long as they fell within certain limits — no more than 30 percent of any database search, he recalled being told — and Americans were not explicitly singled out in the searches.

The former analyst added that his instructors had warned against committing any abuses, telling his class that another analyst had been investigated because he had improperly accessed the personal e-mail of former President Bill Clinton.

Other intelligence officials confirmed the existence of the Pinwale e-mail database, but declined to provide further details.

All of this started under George W. Bush. But it's President Obama's problem now. Obama's adoption of some of George W's abhorrent policies confirms my theory that the office of the presidency corrupts the president, no matter who he is. Bureaucratic inerta and fear of the unknown will moderate even the most liberal presidents, who known damned well that the business of American is, literally, business, and that pure self-rule, public health and safety will always be subordinated to profits and military concerns. BIll Clinton probably knew that he was acting against his better judgment in furthering the policies of George H.W. Bush, and Obama is in the same boat.

This is no excuse, of course. We can clampdown civil liberties and privacy or we can honor civil liberties and privacy notwithstanding worst-case scenarios. There will always be people who say that some intrusions on privacy and freedom of speech are necessary to prevent a greater evil, but if I knew the government was reading my emails and listening to my phone calls, I'd be pretty pissed off. And you should be, too.