>> we would be pretty much back to where we were a couple of decades ago. I suppose the government would need to employee more real people to monitor other real

>> we would be pretty much back to where we were a couple of decades ago. I suppose the government would need to employee more real people to monitor other real people. My view is - why is that a bad thing? We didn't live in some crazy unsafe time then and I don't think it'll be any different now. However what if I was wrong and the world did become less safe? We need to start looking at 'safety' thorough the bigger picture. If this regulation really did make it harder to catch e.g. terrorists and there were 1-3 more attacks a year with 50 deaths total should we give up our privacy to prevent that given the consequences of giving up privacy to save those 50 lives? That loss of life would obviously be tragic but in the grand scheme of things it's a tiny number. I've seen governments take away people's freedoms to stop violence and keep people safe. It generally doesn't make much difference. And if we let the government take away this freedom how long until they take away another? How long until we start letting them take away freedoms that only serve to frustrate the bad guys and fuel further violence (again this has happened in the past).