Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology argued that as technologies advance, citizens need "more and not fewer privacy protections." When the Constitution was written, there were no telephones or e-mail, he pointed out, and the Internet age has changed everything.

"E-mail lives on," Nojeim said. "The thing that you thought was a private thing, the thing that you wrote that was a private thought, is living out of your control and that's something that you have to come to grips with." Federal laws also need to reflect that reality, he said.

But the current White House has not trended in that direction, Nojeim said. "While more privacy protections are being called for, the administration wants Congress to move in the opposite direction." He was referring indirectly to Bush's hope that lawmakers will revamp a 1978 intelligence law in ways that worry privacy and civil liberties advocates.

Meanwhile, this week's unveiling of the CIA's so-called "family jewels," 703 pages of documents that the agency fought to keep secret for three decades, underscores the need for greater safeguards, he said. When left to their own devices, law enforcement and intelligence officials "do what they think is appropriate for them to carry out their mission, which is not necessarily thinking about and protecting civil rights," he said.