Logic is on our side here. Of course, that never counts for much in politics :)
The key problem is that there is no system of checks and balances, no matter what your personal congress-critter might say. Terms that are interpreted one way when the law is created get interpreted another way in secret. Going after certain people becomes checking up on everybody. Checking up on everybody becomes store-now, search-later. The government's natural oversight and regulatory authority over commercial businesses is being used as leverage to collect data on the population against our will. It's just out of control.
I'm concerned that a Constitutional Amendment is really what it's going to take to put this genie back in the bottle. Sure, you stop NSA, but does that stop the FBI from picking up the keys? Stop any of a dozen other agencies from creating similar systems? I'm optimistic about this particular fight, but the overall war is looking like whack-a-mole out there to me.
And Sensenbrenner, a principal author of the Patriot Act, is outraged by the secret interpretation being used to justify these programs:
http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docu...