Wish I could double-upvote this. Great comment that puts it in context. We are not seeing this abused at the average citizen level right now. What we've done is

Wish I could double-upvote this. Great comment that puts it in context. We are not seeing this abused at the average citizen level right now. What we've done is establish new standards where the government in the future will be able to do really bad things without oversight. That has to stop >>I'm willing to vote single-issue on reigning in NSA That's it, in a nutshell. The tech community, and those interested in not living in an Orwellian state in 20 years, needs to go single issue on this and ditch the traditional political parties. If we were to get serious on this the way the prohibitionists got serious on alcohol, politicians will listen. Otherwise it's going to be 50 years of bullshit with small gains made every few years just to keep the yokels happy. I firmly believe that this is the worst change in the system of governance for the United States in its entire history. Our type of government was not made to be on a constant war footing, with the government mass trolling the net. It just wasn't made to operate like that. It won't work. It's not that there isn't a threat, or that we don't take the threat seriously enough, or that it's not a new world and so on. It's that it doesn't work. Right now the politicians and those in power are too ignorant to understand this. They think that the danger outweighs the damage they're doing. We're going to have to get a big club out and beat them over the head for that to change. Single-issue voting is that club. (Assuming a large-enough percentage of people buy into it).