Dear FRONTLINE,

What many of the obviously neoconservative posters here fail to grasp is that we have systems already in place to prevent tragedies like 9/11. Did you forget that Condi Rice, then National Security Advisor, completely IGNORED the CIA memo entitled: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" -- that was provided to her in the summer of 2001? Apparently you did. The memo (among others) also stated that bin Laden favored an air attack. The outgoing Clinton administration security team also tried to brief the incoming Bush security team on various threats, but they were not taken seriously.

The CIA and FBI do their jobs and do them pretty damn well without warrantless spying on US citizens. September 11 happened not because the CIA and FBI failed us, it happened because the Bush administration failed us. The rest has been a grand cover-up and Americans have bought it hook, line and sinker for political and other inexplicable reasons.

Kansas City, Mo

Dear FRONTLINE,

One issue touched on but not fully explored in this excellent and much-needed report is the possibility that enforcement agencies might use this information not only to track people who might be connected to terrorists, but to try and determine who might be a nascent terrorist. What scares me is that if I watch the wrong movies on the internet, check out the wrong library books, study under the wrong professor, and post the wrong ideas on my blog I might have my door busted in by the FBI some morning.

What we are looking at here is not only the loss of personal privacy, but the loss of personal opinion. This could easily turn, and, infering from the incredibly high walls of secrecy the executive branch has thrown up, probably already has turned into a search for thought criminals.

Can I be prosecuted for disagreeing with the actions of my government? If I oppose the war, sympathize with or at least seek to understand the motivations of the "enemy", or suspect particular government institutions of agregious violations of rights and untold violence should I be afraid to voice my view? Can I be punished for speaking out against what I view as injustice if that injustice is in power over me?

Caleb Friz
Chicago, IL

Dear FRONTLINE,

When are you sicko liberals going to get it ? We are at war with ruthless people. If the enemy utilizes the information you so happily publish I hope it's in San Francisco. I don't have anything to hide so I'm hoping the NSA listens to everything I say and watches everything I do. You and your liberal Bush hating rats are no better than traitors. I can sum up he view average middle of the road Americans view the domestic spying and your fight against Alberto Gonzoles in two words. WHO CARES !!!!!

Mike Dyer
Joliet, Illinois

Dear FRONTLINE,

The program provided a clear analysis of security and how the Bush administration is handling it. In the program, you posed the question if the President was violating the law due to the Church Committee back in the '70s. I think that Mr. Bush is violating the law, and although we do need to be protected from these horrific acts, this program needs to be withdrawn. No one, including the government, should have the right to spy on the private lives of the American people.

Plainfield, IL

Dear FRONTLINE,

I must compliment Frontline for being a wonderful program, but I found "Spying On The Home Front" to be a rather biased report. The United States was founded on the idea of personal liberty. This concept gave rise to the Constitution and to the Bill of Rights. The United States government is often painted as a nameless and faceless entity that seeks to invade the privacy of its citizens. In reality, members of the FBI, NSA, CIA, and other departments and agencies have sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution that guarantees those rights. Those in the law enforcement and intelligence communities are dedicated public servants that seek to bring terrorists and criminals to justice while protecting the rights of innocent Americans.

While no department or agency is perfect, the United States government takes proactive steps to protect the personal information of its citizens. Credit card companies and other private entities routinely analyze, warehouse and sell this information. If innocent American citizens have anything to fear, it is certainly not from the United States government.

San Francisco, California

Dear FRONTLINE,

Contrary to the assertion of D. Brown of Philadelphia, the job of the President is not to 'protect the United States', by reading his e-mail, listening to his phone, and watching him gamble. According to Article II, Section I of the United States Constitution, the job of the President is to "PRESERVE, PROTECT, and DEFEND the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES."

The President's primary responsibility is to protect principle above property, not the other way around. And that's why America has always been so special!

April Summers
Santa Barbara, CA

Dear FRONTLINE,

I enjoyed your analysis of the state of our privacy vs data collection and mining.

My only problem with your show was the very minimal or lack of discussion about the problems of long term storage of the data that is collected.

I am a part of the IT industry and fully understand the complexity and usefulness of data mining. In this era of terrorism, I am willing to sacrifice some privacy of my data in order to allow the government to analyze global data in order to recognize patterns that indicate terrorism and like crime. I'm also willing (and recognize) that the data mining results still depend on final human analysis and that errors and mistakes will occur.

The two issues that I think are much more important that how this data is used to find patterns, is the danger of using this mass of data in a more traditional method to research specific individuals. What happens when all of this data is stored indefinitely?

Here's an easy scenario of abuse... I decided to run for Congress and someone who is a fan of the incumbent happens to work in the NSA/FBI/etc. They scan all of this massive data collected for years and can correlate my travel, shopping and hotel activities. This data indicates a pattern that I might have had an affair 5 years ago. They leak this information to my opponent's campaign and they hire a private investigator to confirm and dig up this information. A week later, this information is leaked to a news paper, journalist, tabloid etc. Now, I've suddenly have to deal with combating this dirty laundry and I lose the election. Poof! ...

We need to discuss and insure that the government has measures in place to insure the destruction (and real destruction) of aging data along with methods to allow bad data (which always occurs and will be significant) to be corrected by individuals. Similar to our credit history, how can a mis-targeted individual see and or/remove/fix information that is in error.

We can't return to the world of pre-9/11, that society has changed forever. We must instead insure that as our Government and world changes, that we continue to question our Government and their decisions in order to insure our Freedoms are not compromised.

Jeff Bakke
Farmingdale, NJ

Dear FRONTLINE,

I really wonder what a lot of people on this board would say if a massive terrorist attack took place and it was subsequently proven that the NSA could have intercepted the communications (and the plot could have been stopped).

Why do I think that some of the people professing to be non-partisan about this issue would be screaming about how the plot could have been interdicted if only the NSA had intercepted the communications."

Finally, for the people who like trotting out that stale quote from Benjamin Franklin about security and liberty need to understand that without some basic degree of security, liberty is impossible.

The truth is that people who decry this sort of thing are willing the ends without willing the means.

Alexandria, VA

Dear FRONTLINE,

I think this program was excellent. In one interview the program does address one comment posted here regarding "all private companies do this but Frontline makes a fuzz when it is government doing it [to protect us]"; the anwser is simple: though I resent a private company spying on me (and would like to see legislation to end this), they cannot mistakenly land me in Guantanamo. The government can.

On the other hand, though I believe the ATT employee was sincere and courageous, I think Frontline attempted to oversell him as a high tech communications expert, which I think he was not.

One glaring thing that was missing from the report on Narus is the Israeli connection. I once visited Narus in Santa Clara, CA, and detected a noticeable high percentage of Israeli personnel. Later I found out Narus is indeed linked to Israel (e.g. was funded by Gemini Israel Funds, http://www.gemini.co.il/Default.aspx?p=News&CategoryID=165&ArticleID=264). Given Israel's renowned competency in the area of espionage and their close proximity to US security agencies, are there reasons for concern for foreign espionage in our soil. There are precedents (Jonathan Pollard).

Maybe it is a coincidence, but I am often surprised how often the media (including the media I trust most) stops short of pursuing any leads pointing to Israel. Another example was not explaining to the public what is a "sniper school" in the Jack Abramoff case.

Keep up the good work

Saratoga, California

Dear FRONTLINE,

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin

Howard Killebrew
Auburn, Alabama

Dear FRONTLINE,

David Oliver, of Moore, OK writes;

"After watching the ACLU version of "Spying On The Homefront", I can only say Thank God our President has the courage to safeguard us against further acts of terrorism. I believe that some of our privacy rights must be sacrificed due to terrorism. I am also quite sure that our founding fathers did not envision the current state of our world while writing the constitution."

Nor did the founding fathers think kids would carry guns into schools either, but that doesn't encourage the conservatives into a rational discussion on gun control. With your logic, are you willing to cede some of these gun rights, for the greater good??

David Skalish
Glenolden, Pa.

Dear FRONTLINE,

Thank you so much for sharing so much of our nation's security technology - and our enemies must be so grateful as well. While I also am concerned about privacy, I have no objection to what the government did in Las Vegas about a possible terriorist threat for New Year's Eve - and I'm perplexed about Stephen Sprouse and his wife being so upset. Had something horrible happened, I'm sure their families would have been the first to say the government should have used any necessary means to prevent such a catastrophe.

It's been almost 6 years since 9/11 and we've not had another attack on the Unites States - a coincidence? I don't think so. You smug, anti-government attitude in this report was so apparent, and I think you have become much too complacent about the dangerous situation here in the U.S. because of terriorists. OUr country did not choose this road - it was forced upon us by 9/11 and the world situation today. We have this advanced technology - don't assume our enemies are not desperately to gain it as well. The President's job is to protect the United States - if that means someone wants to read my emails, listen to my phone conversations, watch me gamble at a casino (which I do not do), go right ahead if it will help protect all the citizens of this great country. I think most Americans share this attitude - if you interviewed them instead of the many elitist anti-government people you did, I'm sure you program would have had a different tone.

D Brown
Philadelhia, PA

Dear FRONTLINE,

One question I found was insufficiently answered in this program was: how well does this new approach to finding terrorists work? I've not seen any evidence that mining these vast amounts of data ever resulted in the apprehension of a terrorist or in the prevention of a terrorist attack. Call me cynical, but I believe this 'suspect everyone' philosophy was adopted simply because incompetent and underfunded government agencies had failed to come up with any concrete leads.I'm willing to give up some of my privacy for effective, thoughtful counterterrorism; I won't give it up to make up for the government's own blundering incompetence.And, of course, the government won't discuss its methods, success rate or rationale because that would endanger national security. Maybe true, definitely convenient.Apart from this, history has taught us again and again that giving law enforcement more powers invariably leads not to more effective crimefighting, but to bigger miscarriages of justice. The Terrorism Act in the United Kingdom is a perfect example of this: allowing police to interrogate suspects longer resulted in scores of innocent people landing in jail for years for crimes they had nothing to do with.

Mathijs Panhuijsen
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Dear FRONTLINE,

This is a great program, one that should be rebroadcast so that the widest audience of citizens can see what our government is up to regarding privacy issues.

After reading all of the comments posted here, and ignoring those with blind political objectives who apparently didn't understand the program and its issues, it seems to me that viewers need to read history about what totalitarian states have done in the past.

Too many of our citizens see this as the "If I did nothing wrong, what do I have to fear?" approach. Maybe, they need to speak to Holocaust survivors of the Nazi regime to see that many who were arrested and died during that period also did nothing, except be Jews, non Germanic Eastern Europeans, mentally retarded persons, political opponents to the Nazis, or other factors of non-wrongdoing. Similar situations existed in the communist states of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, especially during the Stalinist era. How many were sent to the Gulag who did "nothing wrong" except that someone reported them as "suspicious." Don't we have our own gulag at Guantanamo?

Sadly, many Americans just don't care. They live life without a clue until their identity is stolen costing them their financial security and untold problems. We can trust our government only when the government is accountable to the people for its actions, not the other way. This terminology of "War on Terror" is in error. You don't have a war on a concept. It is used incorrectly to give this administration the latitude to conduct itself in ways our founding fathers would not accept when we are not at war. Will all of this "data mining" end up being used to deny one the right to vote at some time in the future? With "paperless" voting machines, what is to prevent the government from not recording my vote because I am on a "list?" What is to prevent the government from targeting my tax return for harassing tax audits because I am on a "list?" What is to prevent the government from denying me a government college loan because I am on a "list?" What is to prevent the government from drafting me into the armed forces for combat duty because I am on a "list?"

I hope Frontline will follow up with additional programs on this important theme.

John V. Gallagher
Turnersville, New Jersey

Dear FRONTLINE,

Yes, we want safety - as people like George Bush mention.What Bush and other conservatives here don't understand (or blatantly ignore) is that the most important part of the Constitution was written to keep us safe from insane and illegal excesses by our own government. George Bush has, undoubtedly, made this nation LESS safe than Al-qaeda EVER could!

Bessemer, Pennsylvania

Dear FRONTLINE,

Amazing program, since I work with the networks I could not believe it. I thought it was a major problem to separate the good from the bads.

Evidently I was amazed. Bravo Hedrick Smith!!!!

Bronx, NY