[WOSG]

"Yes, you moron. It IS an attack on my rights. Either everyone is free, or no one is."

No one is free if court-ordered searches take place in libraries and on computers?
suspected criminals under investigation is now "everyone"?
Are you saying that if you were under investigation as a pedophile or terrorist, it violates your rights to be subject to wiretap, library and computer records searches?

[eno_]

When records are collected in central databases that law enforcement can browse with a minimal nod toward "probable cause" THAT is neither freedom nor is it privacy. That form of investigative power reduces everyone's freedom to a tepid least common denominator.

Compare the powers of police investigation today to what existed at the time of the Founders. Not in the form of technology, although that is part of the problem, but in the form of laws that make it easier for investigators to acquire information.

Read my tag line. I have no need to put my life on the line, much less my son's life, for a nation that rapidly slides toward being unfree.

Perhaps some of the powers in the Patriot Act are needed. But there was certainly no give back in other areas where law enforcement powers are too intrusive. It was therefore purely reducing the "freedom" we supposedly are fighting for.