The Right Kind of Paranoia

How the NSA could fix its data-mining program.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, May 12, 2006, at 5:00 PM ET

We have hit the point where paranoia is a proper frame of mind for assessing nearly everything this administration says or does.

The moment arrived Thursday, when USA Today revealed that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone records of tens of millions of Americans, with the aim of creating "a database of every call ever made," to people not only abroad but also within our borders.