Don't get me wrong, coming off of the tragedy that was 9-11, all these anti privacy, draconian policies that the US was pushing seemed like a good idea. When there is a very real threat of mass death, people willingly hand in some of their freedoms. At the time, that was a great idea, and I was totally in favor of the patriot act at the time.
But I was quite a bit younger and ignorant back then, too. Hindsight is 20/20. If we knew that the 9-11 attacks were one off and there was not an immediate risk of another attack, ever, my opinion would had been different, but you just can't know those kinds of things.
Think my eyes opened up right around the time the WMDs in Iraq were found to be fake, and google started to drop their 'don't be evil' slogan.