In an update to a recent spying story, USA Today reports that the US National Security Agency (NSA) is building a massive database of all private and corporate phone calls made in the US.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Washington, lawmakers are frustrated that the National Security Agency refuse to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the domestic spying matter, forcing them to halt the investigation.

The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers’ role in the program.

“We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program,” OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey’s office shared the letter with The Associated Press.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans %u2014 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.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made %u2014 across town or across the country - to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

Gaining more strength than ever, it is sadly the Military-Industrial Complex that essentially runs the US and not its people or its lawmakers.