You people scare me.

You are afraid of rag-tag groups of people who want us dead, so you are fine with letting us be monitored..."because I have nothing to hide"?

We went for 40+ years, with thousands of nuclear missles pointed at us, without desecrating our liberty as we have done since 9/11. I'd rather risk another strike that hurts my countrymen, than to smother my liberties, which would kill my country.

That power to monitor won't go away...it will only solidify, and spread...and remember, the same power that the Repubs use now, the Dems can use later. Do you think they won't use it for internal monitoring of 'unamerican activities'? Who defines that?

Sigh...I guess a free country doesn't necessarily yield a love for freedom.

Anyone who thinks the Federal Government, once given access to information, would voluntarily relinquish it once the "war" is over is exceedingly naive. If it were up to our Beloved Leader, the state of emergency would go on forever - the better to keep We the Sheeple from asking too many questions.

By condoning the actions of the Bush Administration and the NSA, you admit defeat. The terrorists have won. They want to destroy our free and open society, and it's working. You frightened children, willing to sacrifice anything in order to be kept safe, are not good Americans. You are slaves to your terror, and our enemies' best friend.

Mark,

You took the words right from my mouth. Being a 23yr conservative male nothing in this world scares me more than the way this country is going.

This is old news. We already know this is going on. This guy has to shop to get a buyer. That in itself speaks volumes. This does nothing to bolster unity in America. Have some cheese to go with your whine. Our freedoms were lost a long time ago when the people of America 'gave' less to the states and more to the government. It's just really ironic to me that a Republican leader is the one to put the accent mark on top. There is a balance between security and freedom and though it doesn't bother me to have this kind of invasion of privacy on a temporary basis, I wouldn't want a permanent policy....certainly not if Hillary were Pres.! If you think Bush's politics are without thought to outside arguments or by bullying tactics, Hillary will exponentially increase those statistics!

They believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.

-Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800

Alright a couple of points here:

"Loose ships sink ships." is what is referred to as a straw man argument. Yes loose ships sink ships but that has nothing to do with our privacy rights and freedoms being infringed upon. No ships are at stake in this case, and even if they were these are civilians that are being monitored not servicemen. This is about illigal and indiscriminate inteligence gathering on US citizens not legitament war time stadegies. This is about a man calling attention to a law being broken, a law that is every bit as legitiment as any in our country including our constitution. This is not about a man telling the enimy about a ship that's about to attack them. It's more like a man telling the country about a ship that's about to collide with the statue of liberty. If you can't see the difference, then something is seriously skewed with your logic.

We take Bush's word that they are only surveying "suspected terrorists" and even if this were true, as suspects and not convicts they still have privacy rights. The moment we start allowing law enforcement, intelligence, or the military to arbitrarily remove rights when they have suspicions is the moment our rights are nothing more then a delusion of semantics.

By gathering intel on everyone, and filtering it out to just suspects they effectively are putting the cart before the house. By having such a large pool of information they have enough to determine suspects based on that pool, thus justifying it's collection. This is a convenient bit of circular logic that means anyone, anywhere is a suspect if they do something suspicious. Such as what I'm doing now by exercising my free speech and giving an unpopular opinion about something they're doing.

I find it totally odd that everyone is so trusting of the same government that has lied and caused the deaths of many innocent soldiers, treats it's veterans like crap and financially supports all types of people instead of its own. Our freedoms stem from people who left opression and tyrants, not to be followed up by another form of it. I agree, some things are necessary but we could be spending money on more productive things than spying on internet traffic.

Mark Klein is a patriot. He risks his job to expose physical evidence of a crime against our constitution. This is grounds for the impeachment of George Bush. War or no war, this is an infringement to our most basic rights as American citizens.

The Fourth amendment to the United States Constitution is one of the provisions included in the Bill of Rights. The Amendment guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, and was originally designed as a response to the controversial writs of assistance (a type of general search warrant), which were a significant factor behind the American Revolution.

Once our leaders start disregarding what is written in the constitution, the terrorist have won the first battle of the war.

God Bless America. Because we're going to need it.

The sheer asinine comments of those willing to let the government run their lives is a testament to the sedentary 'see, hear, speak no evil' drones of middle america. It's preposterous to allow things like this happen 'because we want to protect you'

Protect you from what? Terrorism? What's Terrorism to you may be free speech to most..Terrorism to you may be worshipping what god you want to choose to most...Terrorism to the guy doing the Big Brother may be an ordinary way of life to most. The point is that giving up little freedoms to a faceless 'mothering' is a true real terror. Little freedoms add up and then big freedoms begin to erode.

And to the people who say 'he should not be sticking his nose in' I got three words for you - The Pentagon Papers. Look it up and find out why sometimes 'sticking your nose in' is needed.

'For your own good' is NOT an answer to impeding on what people bled for today, yesterday, and inevitably the future.

A lot of you people are funny. Do you think the Bush Administration was the 1st to to a national wiretap? The NSA has been around along time prior to them coming out of the closet. Think about how many years NSA and other agencies gathered info on the masses. Stop using Bush as the one who started this. Our government has been spying on its people for 50+ years now and all of a sudden people are like "OH MY GOD IT SO WRONG" Wake up and smell the roses. Only reason we know about it now is because technology is more abundant and the media is all over the place. Goes back to another old saying, "what you don't know can't hurt ya"

The actions of this administration since 9/11 has been suspect at the very least. We have opted out of the Geneva Convention and theatened war with the Netherlands if an American were brought up on charges and we have detained the usual suspects for five years or more without access to family, lawyers or any due course guaranteed under a democracy.

How are we suppose to trust those who went to war under the guise of promoting democracy, yet deny them the benefits of democracy?

Anyone can be considered a terrorist at any given moment, including those who criticize the administration or the war.

The words 'National Security' is being used as a rationalization as it was during the Nixon administration to cover up that administrations crimes against the American people. Then, covert spying on American citizens were rampant, especially those who criticized the Viet-Nam war or the Nixon administration. Sound familiar?

Very well done Jerry.

Gosh .... and all this time I thought it was "Loose lips sink ships."

Remember this: Wars are between governments, and, big government will protect only itself. OBL hates our govt seemingly, but, its more about what he wants to see the world shaped into. OBL uses our govt as his whipping boy for recruitment, and our govt uses OBL as its reason to clamp down. EVEN IF the monitoring is not being used in abusive way, a person someday in the future will say, "get me the internet traffic for that Greg Sudderth guy, find something, find something where he supports OBL and let's pick him up." If its a resource, someone will use it. We don't leave loaded guns around the house on the sofa, do we?

As someone who works in the IT field, I can tell you first hand that 1) The government does not care what the average joe does on the internet and 2) The government does not have the resources to capture everything on the internet, at this point in time it is impossible. That amount of data (even per minute) exceeds the limitations of mass storage and would call for warehouses full of drives/tapes etc (and that might only capture 1 days worth of information).

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Quote by that pesky, left-wing nut Benjamin Franklin. Let's remember what it means to live in America, and stop freely sacrificing our liberties. If we do, the "bad guys" have won, haven't they?

Why it it so easy to picture Klein and Jane Fonda in the same picture??????????

Our president has tried to make this country safe from these terrorist since 9/11. How soon some people have forgot what this country went through amazes me. There are people in this country like this Mark Klein that wants to put his policial agenda ahead of the safety of this country. I say if you are not doing anything wrong why would you worry about this. It makes me feel safer for me and for my family to know that the government is watching what these terrorist are doing. Mr. Klein does not care about our safety or our soldiers safety. What is wrong with this man! I agree totally with Mr. Dario Gonzalez which stated it so correctly.

Who can you trust these days?

This guy knew ATT was involved with secret government work and decided unilaterally to tell all. Was his motivation to protect us all? I doubt it. Maybe he grew up watching too many superhero cartoons thinking he too could save the world. More than likely he was just looking for a book deal and his 15 minutes of fame. Either way he should be prosectuted to the fullest extent of the law for revealing secrets and possessing secret material without a clearance.