Interesting questions.

Does our security really come at the price of our liberty? I feel most secure when I know my neighbors, and they know me. We share dinners and parties and drinks, and I know they'll look after my house when I am gone. Is my liberty compromised by this? And what sort of "security" are we talking about? The security of "rule of law" such that the streets are quiet at night, and you don't have to live in a walled compound to be safe? Or the security that our enormous gummint is eavesdropping on practically every telephone call and email, and sifting for the next "terrorist attack"? Since we have random explosions at chemical plants anyway, how is a terrorist attack really any different than just another random death toll? More people die on the roads, in cars - by a factor of 10 - than died in the Trade Center destruction. I feel pretty insecure that my gummint is not doing a damn thing about that. Then there is fuel security: We are approaching global peak oil. Our entire lifestyle is insecure. Yet our gummint insists on lining the pockets of rich friends, and engaging in risky foreign policy. That is not security, not at all.

As 6272 point out, "your every conversation and/or e-mail have been monitored for years" ... yet somehow this did not prevent the 9/11 tragedy. Will increased surveillance - and therefore limits on our dissent of gov't policy - prevent future 9/11's? What about the foreign policy, over which few American's really have any say that dictates we isolate America in favor of making our corporations rich ... isn't that actually to blame for creating the jihadis (to fight the Soviets in A'stan in the 80s), and subsequently inflaming their anger by occupying Muslim lands (Iraq, Saudi Arabia) now? Isn't that much more dangerous and limiting to our liberty than what the gummint proposes (and does) now, by torturing suspected terrorists and bombing the living hell out of Muslim lands, creating new radicals willing to give their lives to stop the occupation?

Cesium is right, we are monitored, tracked and compromised all the time. Is that a good thing? Should we just "give up" because it is a "losing battle"? Fucking Google, for all its righteousness in refusing to give data to the Justice Dept. is interested in "knowing everything" about its users, and tracks everything you do anyway. Is that the way to a free future? Is increased gummint surveillance the way to a free future?

If they come for the "eco-terrorists" now, will they come for the protestors next? And then for you later on down the road, for pirating software and sharing music? Or illegally uploading "indecent" images to some random website? Where will this stop?