Everyone should read this. Salon has an exclusive interview (Inside the CIA’s notorious “black sites”, via Boing Boing) with a Yemeni citizen who suffered 19 months of psychological torture at the hands of the CIA. He had no links to al-Qaeda, and provided no actionable intelligence. His offense was having a new passport and having traveled to Afghanistan in 2000. His father died while he was imprisoned.

As we go about our boring daily routines, insulated from the roiling violence by the navel-gazing media and a duplicitous White House, innocent men and women are being tortured by our government. This torture is terrifying, dehumanizing and real. It destroys psyches, separates families, and ruins lives. And it’s done in our name, in the inexplicable belief that it will somehow stop the terrorists, not recruit more unto their cause.

This is not my America. This is not how a democracy protects itself from the inevitably rising surge of religious extremism in a world that is tightly networked by technology. This is how nations rot, and if we do not raise our voices to oppose this inhumanity, we will fall apart.

Telecom companies have broken the law. They’ve disclosed your phone records to the NSA, without a warrant, so that the NSA can profile you. They’ve allowed the government to listen to your phone calls without justification. They want to know who you’ve called, and who those people have called, and they don’t want to answer to anyone. No checks and balances, no restraint, no judicial oversight. Just spooks with computers, listening to your phone calls.

This is illegal. It’s that simple. Companies like AT&T have violated the privacy of millions of Americans, and We The People deserve justice. Instead, our Senate is prepared to pass a law granting them immunity from prosecution or civil lawsuits. Our elected representatives are about to sell us out, and sign away our right to redress of grievances, so that they don’t look weak on terrorism.

This is how the surveillance state is built, and that is how dictatorships are fed. Everyone who lives in the USA should take a minute, go to EFF’s Action Center, and send a message to your Senators opposing immunity for telecoms.