This is an example of just desserts where journalists are concerned. After all of your shilling for bush, your complicity in the lies that led this country into war, your abandonment of your duty to expose the criminal malfeasance of this administration, this is your reward. If you had a shred of common sense, you would have seen this coming years ago, when the Patriot Act was rammed through congress, when an illegal war of aggression was waged through lies and deceit, when civilians were tortured in Abu Ghraib, when others were kidnapped and "rendered" to murderous regimes, when Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame were savagely attacked, when the swiftboats took out Kerry, when Richard Clarke and other whisteleblowers were brutalized, all with the complictiy of the press. American journalists have aided and abetted bush's criminal actions at every turn, and thus they deserve whatever they get from him.

How richly ironic that you now find yourselves being subjected to the government's vicious wrath. Even better than this is the fact that, with your help, bush has been able to stock the judiciary with lunatics from the Federalist Society who will doubless find the government's actions constitutional. When those who received leaks go to jail it won't be for a Miller-like 86 days, but rather for decades. That will be the proper punishment for giving aid and comfort to a group of war criminals and a dictator in the making.

Congratulations.

Does ABC plan to take any action in response?

Tonight we're going to party like it's 1917! Go, Georgie, Go! Do the Gulag Shuffle!

man this is scary

It is unfair.
where is the liberty of the unit states?

This is only the latest outrage by a government in Washington that is far more dangerous to our freedoms as Americans than any previous administration -- even Richard Nixon's.

Those who argue that reporters should be checked up on are ignorant of the fact that a free and unfettered news media is our primary line of defense against a totalitarian dictatorship developing in this country.

Many of these media-bashing posters aren't young enough to remember the obscene and totally unconstitutional abuses of power of the Nixon administration -- abuses that led to Congress in 1978 passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in the first place, which the Bush administration is blatantly violating with its warrantless NSA electronic eavesdropping program.

The only difference between Nixon and Bush is that Nixon's abuses of power were all caught on Nixon's own secret White House taping system -- which proved to be his downfall.

The media-bashers need to re-read their history books and other historical records and learn about Watergate and other abuses of power by Nixon.

"Those who fail from history are condemned to repeat it," the philosopher George Satarnaya wrote. Today's media-bashers are not learning from history.

Big Brother is here, in your face, and they want you to know it.

Good on ABC for putting this in your front page. Given the WaPo's unethical conduct around their one night push poll on privacy as well as the lack of coverage of this piece, one must assume the WaPo doesn't have too much use for privacy or juournalistic integrity. No wonder their drop in readership is twice the industry average.

Like I said before, the NSA+CIA = KGB. The Republicans saw the Soviet police state model and they've built it here in the United States.

THIS PROGRAM IS SEPERATE FROM THE NSA PROGRAM. THIS IS AN ONGOING INVESTIGATION INTO THE BREAKING OF FEDERAL LAWS. THE FBI IS INVESTIGATING PEOPLE FOR LEAKING NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION, IT IS LIKE ANY CRIME, THEY INVESTIGATE IT.

I would like to make my true feelings known but afraid the storm troopers of the current administration would come knocking at my door, so all i have to say is I love you NSA! and what a fine job Bush is doing.

this is the kind of thing i used to imagine was happening back when i was a raving marxist conspiracy theorist in college, the kind of thing i had come to think of as ridiculous since my blood turned red again and i fell back in love with america. but it's happening. the nutjobs were right. they really are dismantling american democracy.
this quote from matt yglesias pretty much hits the nail on the head, i think:

One thing the Bush administration says it can do with this meta-data is to start tapping your calls and listening in, without getting a warrant from anyone. Having listened in on your calls, the administration asserts that if it doesn't like what it hears, it has the authority to detain you indefinitely without trial or charges, torture you until you confess or implicate others, extradite you to a Third World country to be tortured, ship you to a secret prison facility in Eastern Europe, or all of the above. If, having kidnapped and tortured you, the administration determines you were innocent after all, you'll be dumped without papers somewhere in Albania left to fend for yourself.

something's got to be done.

“The freedom of the press is on of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by a despotic government”

Thomas Jefferson quotes (American 3rd US President (1801-09). Primary Author of the Declaration of Independence.

A very interesting simmilarity. The secret agency of Germany ( BND ) is also spying on reporters, which is a big scandal in the German press now.
I guess the secret guys attended the same school for spying on peoples privacy.

Lets see now - email surveillance, phone surveillance, probably satellite imagery is the next thing to be found out as well.

This is almost a similiar experience that the former Soviet Union must have felt when the KGB ruled the roost.

Sounds to me like this program has no oversight. This article doesn't mention who in the FBI issues or keeps track of NSL's. What criteria, if any, is needed before
the FBI can issue a NSL? This smells bad.

I wonder how “backtracking” is different than “tracking?” Perhaps the Bush crew is working on a system to forwardtrack calls we haven’t yet made by monitoring our thoughts about who we might call (no doubt a DARPA project). But don’t worry; the actual content of our thoughts won’t be monitored. Now where did I put my tin foil hat…

One word....dicatorship... we can thank the republican controled congress and senate for the loss of Freedoms

Facism Will Come To America Wrapped In The Flag Carrying The Cross......S.Lewis

Orwell has been proven right!

This really stinks! Just another example of our Oh-So-Nosey government in action. I, personally, don't like the thought of "Big Brother" listening in on our conversations, no matter what the excuse they use. I realise they are looking for terrorists, but most of us do not fall into that category, am I right? I love my country, but I think we are going overboard a bit on the "Homeland Security" thing.

This harrassment and intimidation is a violation of our press's first amendment rights, not to mention it is a contemptuous mockery of our Bill of Rights. Purely the most extreme violation of our nation's moral principles, rules and standards of conduct. Why do you tolerate this and why do you kowtow to this criminal administration?