Don't want the government reading or listening to your correspondence...use snail mail. Nothing is private anymore, to think so is being either naive or dense.
As long as we're in this war, the government needs to do what it needs to do to protect us.
I am in a position to be far more aware of this fact than most people.
The NSA has been doing this kind of thing for ages; my argument is not specific to that at all. I am arguing against the underlying idea that it is constructive in the long-term to give up civil liberties for the appearance of minor improvements in safety. Losing civil liberties to the government frequently creates at least as many problems for the private citizen as it eliminates, and rarely in a fashion that was envisioned when first implemented.
For example, guns were eliminated from airplanes to keep people safe from "bad guys with guns", though not because so many people actually died from "bad guys with guns". But I guarantee you that 9/11 would have been a much less significant event if we had not eliminated guns from airplanes to make the grass-eaters feel safer from "bad guys with guns". In the final calculus, making people feel "safer" probably needlessly cost many American lives, net. I'll bet there were an awful lot of American citizens on those planes that dearly wished the government would have let them carry a gun on board. Eliminating civil liberties inevitable has negative consequences for life and liberty down the line that the proponents of these "safety measures" never foresaw.
When the next Bill Clinton, Al Gore, or Adolph Hitler takes office, he won't be interested in your emails or my emails or our phone calls or the web sites we linked to.
He will be focused on the private and professional life of people like Matt Drudge, Bill O'Reilly, or Robert Novak. He wants to know what sexual peccadilloes Matt has, what DVDs Bill is renting and what people Mr. Novak has been talking to.
If enough people who guard our freedom against an overweening government are compromised, if the few remaining righteous politicians are caught in embarrassing positions, or if a corrupt president even knows about the private conversations and the daily whereabouts of good people in positions of power we can kiss our free republic goodbye.
They now have the authority to read that too.