The real issue here is that the public has no control over the spying. Imho, many would probably be fine with other people listening in on their phone calls, or

The real issue here is that the public has no control over the spying. Imho, many would probably be fine with other people listening in on their phone calls, or going over their browsing history, if the only effect of that would be terrorists getting caught. The problem is that currently there is too much potential for the surveilance data to be comercialized or abused for trivial legal matters. I think much of the debate could be settled by alowing the public to scrutinize the surveillance process, and putting any abuse of the data (i.e. its usage in non-terror-related situations) under extordinarily humiliating punishments (like denationalization).