As to what Rick Fielding said, I'm sorry to say, you can't rely on the "angry youth." Most of them couldn't name the Vice President, let alone protest. The majority of the other young people I know have no idea in Hades what's going on. Anyway, protest would probably require getting up off their fat, lazy bums.

I'd rather risk getting blown up by terrorists than be watched over my shoulder all the time, if it really came down to that. What's disturbing is that our government is doing this in the name of freedom. They're going against of everything we say we stand for, in the very name of the ideals they're violating.

Not wanting to be monitored has nothing to do with doing anything wrong, quite the contrary. Most Americans aren't the sort of folks who'd commit any terrorist acts, yet the government wants to watch their every move. I think it is a vast waste of money and resources anyway. Finding terrorists this way will be very difficult because of the sheer volume of the information they'll gather. (That doesn't keep it from being an effective way to harass Arab-Americans or even people someone in the government doesn't like.)

As to Hrothgar's question, I think this will cause a lawsuit or two. We'll just have to see what the Supreme Court does with it. I'd like to think it would be ruled unconstitutional. (Of course, I'd like to think that Americans would never even seriously consider taking measures like this in the first place, so I might be entirely incorrect.)