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NSA has Patented New Eavesdropping Technology
"The NSA patent, granted on 10 August, is for a system of automatic topic spotting and labelling of data. The patent officially confirms for the first time that the NSA has been working on ways of automatically analysing human speech. The NSA's invention is intended automatically to sift through human speech transcripts in any language. The patent document specifically mentions "machine-transcribed speech" as a potential source.
Bruce Schneier, author of Applied Cryptography, a textbook on the science of keeping information secret, believes the NSA currently has the ability to use computers to transcribe voice conversations. 'One of the holy grails of the NSA is the ability automatically to search through voice traffic. They would have expended considerable effort on this capability, and this indicates it has been fruitful,' he said." You can find more details here.
I think you have been reading too many Tom Clancy novels. How can the ordinary citizen know that the NSA is "essential" for "fighting terrorism" when the NSA's very existance was classified for years, and its budget and most of its operations are still classified? Your statement about the NSA's "necessity" is in the classic sense pure pseudo-science, because it is non-falsifiable. How has the NSA prevented any bombs from going off on American soil. "Sorry, sir, that's classified. But trust us, we're the government, and we have your best interests at heart." The American politicial experiment is based on the assumtion that we dare not trust that the government has the best interests of the people at heart, and so the government is supposed to be accountable to the people, and restrained by the rights of the individual.
The erosion of liberties rarely comes packaged with a label that says "here is a totalitarian control; please hand over your freedom now." It most often comes packaged as "there are Bad People(tm) out there! Let us protect you!"
If we "need" a secret police state to protect us from terrorists, we have already lost the real struggle. A wise teacher once said, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Mark 8:36, KJV) The same question certainly applies to nations. What will it profit America if we become the new Roman Empire, able to enforce a pax americana at home and abroad, if we lose the very idea of what it meant to be "America" in the first place?
Evil and undemocratic means do not give real security
While I will no doubt offend the rabid secularists of /. with this, I would like to point out that the inscription on our currency of "In God We Trust" is a great and necessary viewpoint for the preservation of freedom. [Whether the USA is truly living up to this motto is another matter -- I think it is clear we do not.] If you don't like the word "God", feel free to substitute "Providence", "Fate", "the Universe", or what have you, according to your own tradition and belief. Regardless, the point is that one can try to create one's own security through strength and power, or one can simply try to do the right thing, and trust that it will all work out in the end. That is what "In God We Trust" ought to mean -- that as a nation, we are committed to the principles of liberty, and are willing to risk "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" to live as if this mattered. Even in a dangerous world with certifiable Bad People(tm) out there.
The "security" offered by relying on power is no security at all. Totalitarian regimes fall. Empires crumble. Economies collapse. "Invincible" armies are defeated, "impregnable" defences are broached, and the wheel of history turns again. And really, power is not so absolute as all that. If the USA were to turn into a privacy-lost, thought-police-controlled Absolute Safety State tomorrow, do you really believe that we could make ourselves invulnerable?
If we are willing to send our young men and women to fight and die for oil in the Mideast, don't you think the rest of us ought to be willing to assume some risk to live and die for liberty?
(Of course, the sadly obvious answer is that most Americans would today gladly trade essential liberty for a little temporary safety.)
This is a bug, not a feature
If our society is so fragile that a few terrorists, or the actions of a minor rogue state, can bring us to our knees unless we adopt draconian security measures, I think we ought to admit that this is a bug in the system, rather than resign ourselves to it as a "feature". Slashdotters are quick to lambast the fragility of Microsoft products and praise the stability and robustness of Linux -- now apply this same criticism to the larger technical, economic, and political infrastructures.
Does the electrical power grid offer key targets of opportinity for terrorists? Well then, we should get serious about "negawatts" in the Amory Lovins sense, and look at distributed, locally-generated power rather than relying on a massive electrical grid with a few key failure points and modes. Or even be willing to contemplate the practice of certain Amish groups, which have the rule of "use as much electricity as you want, as long as you make it yourself and don't tie into the grid." Better this, than to live with a secret police.
For an example that's nearer to fruition, consider Richard Stallman. While I might quibble with his analysis of freedom and software (I don't think access to source code is quite as fundamental a right as RMS does), he has certainly done the correct thing with his analysis -- he determined not to allow what he considered to be essential freedoms to be bargained away for the sake of convenience and security, and did the work necessary to live freely. We are all reaping the benefits of his adherance to principle today.
Repeat this analyis with other points of vulnerablity as needed. There's certainly lots of room for debate as to the benefits and drawbacks of particular answers, be we certainly have more options than to be forced to choose between secret, unaccountable intelligence agencies and "a war zone."
For a start on considering this way of thinking, there are several essays by Wendell Berry that may be helpful. (Note: Berry is not a pacifist -- but he believes that our current strategies of "national defense" fail to defend our nation.) Try "Property, Patriotism, and National Defense" in Home Economics and "On Peaceableness Toward Enemies" in Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community.