About this Column COLLEEN STONE is a producer at MaineToday and guest columnist for our blog in print — a "plog" — that combines comments people make on MaineToday.com with her thoughts about issues. Because many people post to online anonymously, or through the use of monikers, Stone may have to limit her source attributions to first name or screen name. In general, the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram prohibits the use of anonymous sources in its stories. We are making an exception for this unique edited column that links the online world to the print world. If you would like to suggest a story, let us know your idea or question. To top of story

A: When those Americans find out, yes. Well, sort of.

Revelations that the NSA has acquired the phone records of tens of millions of Americans without court authority since 2001 as part of the government's war on terror drew mixed reactions from MaineToday.com users.

Responding to Portland Press Herald stories about the situation, you broke into two distinct schools of thought:

1.) I couldn't care less.

2.) I can't believe you don't care!

A large number of users thought the data collection was a necessary measure in the government's efforts to thwart another terrorist attack. Like John, who said, "The nation is at war. Just like the Civil War, World War I, and World War II extraordinary vigilance is appropriate."

Seeing nearly 3,000 of your fellow Americans killed in a terrorist attack will understandably instill fear in people – and it did. As a result, a good number of people are willing to sacrifice some privacy if it means you won't have to see another Sept. 11.

But will monitoring the phone traffic of millions of Americans achieve that end? Besides being outraged, a lot of you thought the phone records monitoring effort was a demonstration of how futile some domestic anti-terror efforts have become. Howard was one user who made that point:

"Our government can differentiate among citizens about who might be associated with Middle Eastern Terrorist cells and who obviously isn't. It can obtain the warrants to act on those people and not the rest of us. To not do so just reveals the ineptness of the Bush administration and his intelligence community."

A lot of users argued that if people have nothing to hide, having their calls monitored shouldn't bother them a bit – and happily volunteered to turn over any information the NSA wants. (Some of you even went so far as to suggest that anyone who was upset by the program was likely guilty of something. Don't worry, I haven't ratted you out to the NSA – yet.)

Dotti put it this way: "If the NSA wants to monitor my boring phone calls, it is fine with me. There are a lot of paranoid people in the world, I guess I'm just not one of them, because like I said, I have nothing to hide."

Transparency and honesty are generally good policies. But whether or not you're doing anything wrong, do you want someone monitoring your phone calls? Why not post some agents in your house? After all, if you're not doing anything wrong in your house, it shouldn't bother you.

Right?

That's an extreme scenario of course, but some users thought the program – and Americans' indifference about it – could lead us down a slippery slope toward more surveillance of innocent Americans.

One such user, Gordy, said, "As the movie clip says. . . be afraid, be very afraid if our government continues down this path of secret surveillance of the general public."

In other words, the expectation of privacy that many of us have might be a little too high. And that privacy might erode even more in the future. Others gave that argument a big "pashaw," saying people were making a civil rights mountain out of a surveillance molehill.

H.S. Harrison: "This is not 'eavesdropping on millions of innocent Americans' as the hand-wringers want us to believe. It seems these Chicken Littles want us to lose the War on Terror."

Lots of people see opening up their lives to the government as an act of patriotism.

Yet another user named Allan, who said he'd served in the military for 20 years, pointed to the irony of compromising certain freedoms like the privacy of phone records in the name of war:

"Countless military personnel have died to protect the freedoms of all Americans. If you are willing to give up your freedoms so easily, you do not understand what it means to be an American. Take a civics class or a history class for heaven's sake."

I was paying my electric bill the other night and took special note of the cheery slogan on the back of the Central Maine Power Co. envelope:

"Flip a switch and we're there!"

Call it a sign of the times, but for a second, I took it literally.

Colleen Stone can be reached by e-mail, but if you have a comment about this piece, please post it below.