Before You Pick Up That Phone,

take a moment to think that the government is keeping a record of the numbers you call.

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent and scary post putting the traveler ratings I wrote about Friday into context. You should read it.

He reminds us of the news from this past summer, which somehow managed to disappear from the national debate.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

Greenwald makes the point that not only is the government keeping unprecedented amounts of data about the general public, it is doing so in secret, and the decisions about it are happening in the dark. The programs so far revealed have been in operation for years before coming to light; who knows what else is going on that hasn't been disclosed.

As a shy child, I was always a little bothered by the holiday song in which Santa "knows if you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake." It was bad enough when it was Santa, a jolly old elf who brings toys. Who wants Dick Cheney having that kind of power?