Back in Tribal days, the enemy was easy to spot, being from another village, and was someone who did not look or dress like you. you knew who they were
As civilization advanced, conflict became a profession in its own right, and societies chose open fields of battle that were safely away from the royal booty.
Then, when armies increased in size, smaller societies found the new tactic of hiding behind trees rather than standing in the open to be decimated. The larger societies naturally had to adjust.
now these smaller political units no longer find trees safe, and are taking the tactic of exclusively hiding inside the people. this is causing all Civil hell to break loose.
How does a civil society adjust to a deadly enemy (make no doubt of it) always living within its midst without compromising and removing the civil liberties that comprise the foundation of its laws?
Yes, terrorism has been with us a long time, but never has it been so potentially deadly where a very small group of individuals can cause the deaths of 10s of thousands of citizens with minimal effort. The challenge is so great that at first only a blunt club approach is possible. Break the laws as they no longer work to find the enemy, as the first priority is to locate that enemy. As the mistakes of that approach become all too obvious, more sophisticated laws will arise that rely on more subtle electronic surveillance. to decry this as wrong is not seeing things as they soon will be.
From the unfortunate vantage point of Foresight it seems that to bend our existing laws means they will broken, and the very foundation of our laws will be swept away. Hindsight might give us a different view. Trust that while we are making mistakes now, the tide of history is cyclic in nature, and a better way will be found.