You know, be it "sneak and peak" or wiretaps or data mining or whatever.... There's a real simple way to address both national security and 4th amendment issues.
Pass an exculpatory law that any evidence of a crime discovered by these "anti-terrorism" searches that is NOT terror related CANNOT be used in court.
If the FBI thinks I'm a terrorist, but I turn out only to be bragging about running a stop sign on a chat room, then move along, copper!
If I am a SF lib nutter claiming "Death to America" and I illegally bought some C4 with intent to use it in a terrorist plot, then throw the book at me.
And even in a bad case where an anti-terror wiretap turns up good old fashioned tax fraud, then, sorry IRS, you gotta catch me some other way.
Granted, the Bush Admin is not going to use the NSA to prosecute traffic violations. But to codify that into law now would allay any fears of being hauled off to jail in the middle of the night because some computer flagged you as looking at too many "hate" sites like FR!
This is very, very troubling. It appears that some in the federal government have decided they want to be able to track the computer activities of any person in America, to reconfigure everything they've ever done online, and to have that available any time govt. wants to use it.
The people in govt. change, but the beast remains and gets larger. And then it takes orders from someone else.