I've been reading and listening to various people saying sometimes very stupid things about this over the last few days. For what it's worth, here's what I think:
I am in no way comfortable with the government snooping into anything in my life. I don't like having to get government approval to buy a firearm or carry, I don't like that banks have to report certain types of transactions to the feds, I don't like various agencies having the power to screw you over that they do, etc. Overall I tend to agree with Reagans' comment that the most terrifying words you can hear are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help". Overdramatizing a bit, but sometimes not by much. Sometimes not at all.
I do understand that there are reasons for some of it(sometimes idiot reasons that aren't near good enough). And sometimes the reasons are good. This is one of those cases. From what I gather, this is not some spook or clerk listening to you tell your girlfriend what you have in mind for the weekend; they're looking for calls to and from certain places and numbers and if something matches up, doing the legal stuff to look further into it.
Am I real comfortable with it? Hell no! I am NEVER real comfortable with such things, the potential for abuse is too real and constant. I've mentioned having worked with some LE databases in the past; these things are necessary and do a lot of good, but the damn things are abused constantly by people who don't think/don't care/figure "I am the Law, and I can do what I want". Same thing with programs like this. Will there be abuses? Almost certainly. The key there becomes what happens when someone's caught abusing it. Will it be like the bullshit BATFE has been caught at multiple times, where they basically walk away from it(sometimes with praise from various idiot politicians), or will the hammer come down on them the way it should?
That's to be seen. Or, considering NSA, not seen but hoped for. I understand that we are in the First Terrorist War, and things have to be done. I do NOT give a blanket exemption to law on that basis; I do understand, as I said, that things have to be done.
Yesterday I clicked onto some lefty blog I hadn't seen before, and the writer expressed the opinion that the only reasons he could see that there was not widespread outrage among all people was that a: they hadn't heard the facts about this story, b: don't understand this story, or c: don't care about their rights being trampled. Not even registering was the possibility that d:, they heard about it, understand it, care very much about their rights, and understand this is looking for the enemy, not your grocery list/girlfriends bra size or whatever. With few exceptions NOBODY likes the government snooping around(I think the people who say things like "If you're not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't mind your car/home/records being searched" are fools); lots of people DO understand that we're in a fight for our national/cultural survival here, and this is one of the tools the fighting is done with.
I'm out of time, but that about covers it anyway.
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