I am again reading another story about the NSA.  This one is from ZDNet titled, Yahoo
Reveals US Government Made 13,000 Requests for User Data.

I am finding myself struggling with a solid opinion on the controversy
over the NSA Prism debate going on.  I am
not sure yet if what I read is true or if it is fabricated.

I can live with the original FISA guidelines and limitations
in order to provide our law enforcement and military with the intelligence they
need to fight our enemies of the state.
It is the alleged egregious violations of our privacy as citizens by a
government run unrestrained that worries us all.  If you give bureaucrats and politicians the
power it seems the temptation to abuse it is too much.  If the allegations prove true then our
privacy has been trampled by bureaucrats run amok.  Hopefully elections, firings and courts will
be enough to put us back on a constitutionally sound path.

There is a word to the wise in this debacle I have heard
before.  If you don’t want to see your
private stuff on the wall of a courtroom or fear that it is where it should not
be then don’t put it in print, on the Internet, in e-mail and so on.  Today we don’t really have any privacy we can
count on, except if we stay private.

The Fourth
Amendment is interesting.  It
protects us against unlawful search and seizure, see Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967).  Despite this ruling according to some
constitutional scholars it does not necessarily guarantee us privacy.  Keep that in mind.