I however feel that our officials are good people, they may get some things wrong, but they are working for the people and are under paid at the same time.
Many are not such good people. They use their office to bend the government to serve not the people, but special interests. Often that special interest is their own pocket (though usually very indirectly so as not to be busted quite red handed).
I also think some are a bit parinoid. We are not living under a Sadam or a Hitler here. Speak with someone who survived these dictators. There are not many. We are far from tyranny here. However, I think people in general want to believe this.
You miss the point. We do not ever WANT to live under such. By removing rights and protections, and not limiting the powers of government, it is INVITING such to happen. It is not paranioa recognize the danger in this. It is foolishness on the part of those who fail to recognize the danger. And since you invoked Hitler, go back to Germany before Hitler. It is amazing how fast things changed once people were convinced that their society was under attack, who to blame and that drastic measures needed to be taken for the "sake of the nation".
This law was necessary to continue to preserve our freedoms. Again, how many of you were tapped? And don't answer EVERYONE, because that is rediculous.
The correct answer is EVERYONE. Do you not understand it? Okay sometimes I lose sight of the fact that not everyone is in the IT field. Let me be clear on this. The federal government, under direction from the administration, has installed special boxes in the main hubs of our national data network. ALL data traffic (that includes most voice communications as well since they are digitized and routed over the same data network) routes through these major hubs. And the government boxes, get a copy of EVERY single packet that routes through in real time. This is how (or shall I say but one of their ways) the government gets the traffic. Once they get it, they have massive computers at the NSA monitor, IN REAL TIME the content of the traffic. They can watch for keywords. They can watch for traffic between certain nodes. They can listen for voice recognition of certain people. And they can do all of this with computers. It is computers doing the monitoring. Software and hardware, not people. So yes it CAN be done, and IS BEING DONE. Now you must realize, that in addition to trying to spy on potential terrorists, it could also be used to undermine (or worse) political enemies of those in power. It could be used to for oh so much, and none of it good. And for all we know (because it is secret) they may already be. But hey, not to worry because you TRUST the government not to abuse it's power right? The fact that this was even done OUTSIDE LEGAL channels PROVES that we cannot trust our government already, not to mention a history of operating outside the law and the public control.
Also, the IV ammendment states that you are protected from UNREASONABLE searches. This is not unreasonable to me. I think it is entirely reasonable to have our government working in any way to protect it's citizens. Our men and women died so that our country could continue to protect and preserve, which is what we are trying to do here.
Well, the Supreme Court has held that reasonable is defined as upon probable cause, and specific to the person and subject of interest. Drag net methodology has been specifically rejected as not being reasonable. Tapping everyone in order to maybe find something is a drag net and is not reasonable.