Earlier today, Bush responded to a question about whether Americans should feel that their privacy has been invaded by a government effort to collect data on tens of millions of phone calls.

Bush responded: "We got accused of not connecting the dots prior to Sept. 11.  "We’re (now) going to connect the dots."

I hate to state the obvious, but there is a vast difference between connecting dots, and collecting dots. 

The pre-9/11 intelligence was a failure of making the connection between pieces of information.  Suspected terrorist information was not cross-tabulated with immigration data.  Information about pilot schools obtained by the FBI did not make it into other hands.  The data points (i.e., the "dots") were there — 9/11 came about because of failure to make the connections.

When the government gets the phone records of millions of Americans, it is connecting nothing.  In fact, it is probably making the process of connection harder, adding white noise to an already difficult task.

The "connect the dots" analogy is actually pretty useful.  Imagine a piece of paper with five dots, and try to find a pattern (say, a perfectly symmetrical five-pointed star).  Now imagine the same piece of paper with a thousand dots, and try to find  the same star shape.  Easier in a sense, because there are more data points to choose from, but you are less likely to find the star.  In other words, lots of false positives.

Consider what FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley said back in 2004:

Outspoken Minneapolis FBI agent Coleen Rowley, appearing on a panel for the nonpartisan Eisenhower Foundation on Wednesday, warned that counter-terrorism agents now are swamped with intelligence data and have "too many dots" to connect.

Continuing to press her concerns publicly in her last months as an active agent, Rowley also questioned the need for an intelligence "czar," a central recommendation of the 9/11 commission.

She said the bureau’s dramatic shift to focus its resources on terrorism has resulted in "a huge pendulum swing . . . from the mistakes of overcomplacency before Sept. 11. Now we’re perhaps embarking on what I call the uncharted waters of massive intelligence collection.

"That changes the problem, and it also changes the mistakes and the errors that are being made now," she said.

So aside from the civil liberties angle, there is reason to believe that massive "dot" collection is actually hurting our national security.