"One has to give credit to the US govt.'s efforts though: not a single case of terrorism on US soil after 9/11. That's pretty impressive."

Wait -- that's definitely not true; the Boston marathon bombings and Newtown come to mind. I think you implied in your second paragraph that "dealing with domestic terrorism" is a separate issue -- in truth, I don't think we can properly separate domestic from international. Terrorism is terrorism.

That being said, I'm not convinced we live in a different enough time to warrant the infringement of basic rights, either. While the article might be suggesting that we can't draw a line at all, that's not what I'm suggesting either. I just think we need to carefully balance the issue of safety vs. freedom.