Via Spencer Ackerman, comes telecom technician Mark Klein, revealing the truth about Bush’s wiretapping:

“The president has not presented this truthfully,” said Klein, a 62-year old retiree. “He said it was about a few people making calls to the Mideast. But I know this physical equipment. It copies everything. There’s no selection of anything, at all — the splitter copies entire data streams from the internet, phone conversations, e-mail, web-browsing. Everything.”

What Klein unearthed — you can read it here — points to a nearly unbounded surveillance program. Its very location in San Francisco suggests that the program was “massively domestic” in its focus, he said. “If they really meant what they say about only wanting international stuff, you wouldn’t want it in San Francisco or Atlanta. You’d want to be closer to the border where the lines come in from the ocean so you pick up international calls. You only do it in San Francisco if you want domestic stuff. The location of this stuff contradicts their story.”

And don’t overlook the point: this program was not begun AFTER 9-11. It began before terrorism was on Bush’s agenda. Which begs the question: who was he trying to listen to BEFORE Osama got his attention?

“These are not babes in woods. They knew what they were doing,” Klein said. “The violation of the Constitution is where they split off — where the splitter splits off full copies of a datastream, and connects to other companies’ internet stuff, like Sprint or GlobalCrossing. They don’t want people to understand that. They want to portray it like the president does, that it’s a handful of international phone calls. That’s the soundbite, and that’s not true. It affects millions of people domestically.”

Klein has been public with his insider account for nearly two years, with precious little publicity to show for it, thanks to the relative paucity of national media in San Francisco. Coming to Washington might have changed that: his day was packed with press calls and face time with at least a half-dozen Congressional staffers, mostly from Democratic Senators Joe Biden, Sheldon Whitehouse and Barbara Boxer. Press attention and one-on-ones in the corridors of power might be nice, he said, but it’s not enough. “I’m not impressed by people with speeches pretending to be on your side,” he said. “I want to see votes. In our favor.”

Christy Hardin Smith has video, directs us to C-Span coverage and has the contact info you need.

If this doesn’t produce a media storm and a public outcry, then this country deserves tyranny and every bit of ugly that will mean.

And I’ll add, if the so-called conservatives in the blogosphere don’t join in the objections, they are Vichy-Americans and nothing, nothing more.