[CWuestefeld]

You're assuming that these programs really are serving to curtail terrorist activities. In fact, that is very much in doubt.

Given that the net effect of these programs, so far as anyone in the government has been able to demonstrate, ranges from zero to trivially small, rendering these programs inoperative will have a zero or trivial positive effect for the terrorists.

I suspect that you're reply that the govt's inability to demonstrate the program's efficacy is because such a demonstration would necessarily reveal so much that the programs would be rendered ineffective in the process. Too damned bad. At some point we've got to touch base with the philosophical foundation on which the government is built. Ultimately, we are the masters, and the government operates only as we allow it to. Allowing the government to circumvent so many of the liberties which the Bill of Rights guarantees will be conserved for the people is to turn the design of our government on its head.