If we really valued privacy it wouldn't be temporary. We had the tools in place before 9/11/2001 to deal with terrorism and simply didn't use them. There was no need to add move government/corporate spying on Americans beyond what was in place. The expiration of the Patriot Act was a defeat for terrorists.

What #1 said.

I think uproar over giving this information to the NSA is a distraction. What about commercial uses, like the phone company noting who places regular calls to an oncologist and selling that information to insurance companies.

@4: Commercial users cannot put people in prison. Commercial users cannot put people on no-fly lists. Commercial users cannot use gag orders. Commercial users are not paid by us and overseen by our elected representatives. Commercial users' actions are not constrained by the Bill of Rights.

Does anyone believe some puny expiration of authority will stop our super-secret spy agency? The telephone data sweep was never authorized in the first place. The law that expired hadn't authorized that program, according to a recent ruling by the Court.

Meanwhile, there's all sorts of telephone hardware and software you can plug into the internet and bypass the entire PSTN system, which kind of renders that whole NSA program moot, especially if that's where the terrorists take their communications..