The problem here of course is you're not just trading your privacy for your feeling of security, it's that you are trading MY privacy for your sense of security, and doing so without my permission and against my direct wishes.
The point I was sort of facetiously making here was that the people who implement these things don't think about it the way we do. They probably don't feel ashamed and do it out of a misplaced sense of patriotism, power or coercion(if they got caught doing wire crimes).
More granularly, if you believe you are protecting America from a 9/11 scale attack I could certainly see trading away some of your fellow countrymen's privacy.
These aren't my personal views on privacy or security I was making the point that some engineers won't be ashamed implementing this sort of stuff. I am pro freedom and privacy to be clear, and, I wouldn't make the above trade.