There is a cost to having a free society and living with the potential of a terrorist attack is one that I'm fine with.

I feel like this kind of blanket statement hinders discussion. Privacy is an imagined construct, anyway. Unless you're a complete anarchist, you're okay with giving up a certain amount of privacy for the greater good of national security. After all, government is the only reason you're able to own any of the things you are typing/writing/storing these secrets on in the first place.

We have a Constitution and constitutionally granted rights, of course, and I think that's a good thing (not to under-emphasize that point). However, we treat the potential victims of massive terrorist plots like statistics when we say that we are categorically okay with risking a potential attack so that no one has to risk their emails being read. If the difference between a school filled with children getting bombed is a few emails getting read without people's immediate knowledge, I would honestly be fine with that. As citizens, we don't know everything that the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc, do on a regular basis; we assume that it's to keep us safe and they're given a certain degree of freedom to achieve that end. In a perfect world, we wouldn't worry about data being shared or held for longer than was needed. These are all bridges we need to cross in these discussions in order to come up with a solution that works both for intelligence agencies and the public.

To be fair, I don't think the NSA or agencies like it should be given carte blanche. I just think we should be treating this like the dynamic discussion that it is. Studies have shown that how the general public feels about privacy and security concerns fluctuate over time. The further we are from a massive plot like 9/11 , the more we want agencies to err on the side of privacy. The closer we are, the more we want them to err on the side of caution. The perfect solution, of course, is likely a happy medium between those two points.