Well, I can understand the comments that have been made. To be blunt, I think a lot of the problem here is that the US has gone from a position of having no perceived terrorist threat, to one that is very real, which is understandable given what happened on september 11th. But laws that are passed without proper scrutiny tend to end up being bad pieces of legislation.

It may be of interest to note that the UK is currently trying to extend its "anti terrorist" legislation, but has suffered a series of defeats in the upper house (the House of Lords). The main reason for this is that the consequences have not been thought through - most of the measures (e.g. access to all private financial information, detention without trial, copies kept of everyones email for 7 years) do not require a judge to rule on whether or not it is appropriate - i.e. they can be used by the government if they think it is the right thing to do.