No. Isn't it understood that the "warrantless wiretap" program revealed by the New York Times in late 1995 (after the White House pressured their editors to keep it out of the paper for over a year) was not the usual wiretap as used by the FBI but rather a "traffic analysis" tool for connecting the dots so domestic numbers could be isolated as possibly terrorist-related? I believe that was the function.
I'm more concerned with "Know Your Customer" programs, an abortive attempt early on to draw the Post Office into the spy business, and new banking regulations to report fund transfers in ever-smaller amounts to federal authorities. The potential for abuse is enormous, and not just because of busybodies with too much time on their hands and a government computer on their desks.
It's that a whole bunch of amateur sleuths, some with an ax to grind, some doing their sleuthing anonymously (on the Internet, even) can gum up the works for legitimate law-enforcement personnel. Chasing down spurious leads is a time-consuming effort which benefits no one. Terrorists, if they were so inclined, could overwhelm the resources of the FBI, local police and even portions of the military with the unwitting cooperation of Americans who "think" they are protecting their country.
As with the War on Drugs, as with the attempts to bring, first, democracy, then stability to Iraq, innocents can be caught up in a web not of their making. When you file a complaint against your neighbor for, say, having a dog that keeps you awake at night barking, the police will want some kind of proof that it's their dog doing the barking and not someone else's. They can't simply take your word for it.
Even if the police investigate and conclude it's the neighbor's dog that's barking, the neighbor is entitled to his day in court.
Making a charge of terrorism, or aiding terrorists, or helping finance terrorist acts, is a much more serious accusation than a barking dog complaint. How many have been made since 9/11? I don't know. I suspect many, many more than the few incidents we have seen in the news, such as the recent discovery of explosives in someone's car trunk.
What about the duds, the false alarms, the white powder that was only talcum, the ratting out of rivals, the cases of mistaken identify of which there are many?
A free country cannot accept as little as a 1% error rate when the lives and livelihood of its citizens are in jeopardy. That's one in a hundred falsely accused, falsely imprisoned, falsely executed. Do you honestly believe that's what it is in Iraq? Would you want that here?
Here's a false dichotomy. See if you agree.
Better that an innocent man go to prison than a terrorist get away with blowing up a [building] [train] [bridge] [city].Not an easy choice, is it?
That's because it's a false dichotomy.
Keep watching the Presidential debates. You'll see more.
Too late to go to sleep, too early to wake up.