I basically agree with your sentiment, but that's where politics (literally- persuading enough fellow citizens or legislators to your point of view) comes in. P

I basically agree with your sentiment, but that's where politics (literally- persuading enough fellow citizens or legislators to your point of view) comes in. People think politics is this dirty, awful business, but it determines the legality or illegality of these kinds of programs. If you want to effectively advocate for change, you have to play the political system. And, telling the general public that PRISM isn't effective has a decent shot at getting these practices outlawed. Telling the general public 'sure, a few terrorists will get through here and there, but that's the price of living in freedom' is pretty much guaranteed to get you the opposite result. You have to focus on effective persuasion, and regular people won't/can't think about hard tradeoffs