Phone Tapping Phooa

Phone tapping. Hot topic right now. Bush and friends say we need it to be safe. Privacy people say we don't need it and it's against the constitution. There it is, in a nutshell.
Basically, we are not entitled to privacy while using leased lines or anything of the sort, unless otherwise expressly written into a contract. It's true we are not just magically entitled to privacy on the phone, Internet or any other medium that we lease time on someone else's property. Think of it as renting an apartment from a landlord. If you just pay the money to stay, without signing a contract, the landlord can enter into the property at anytime he/she deem fit. If you're a bright tenant, you have a contract that establishes parameters for the landlord to enter without your consent and if those parameters aren't met then you do have a right to your privacy and it's illegal for the landlord to enter into the property without your consent. Same goes for the copper and fiber lines that all of our transmissions travel every day. Without an express agreement otherwise, the phone co. has the right to look at anything that they choose.
Now that that's out the window the problem with W's actions in tapping phones lies well within a debate over the power of government. That's right, it should not be a whether you have a right to privacy thing, it should be all about how much power the federal government has. The federal government should have only the power that it has been expressly given by the people. This phone tapping business, I believe, is not given as a power of the federal government and is a expression from the people in power to the citizens of how they are going to stay in power. The real flaw here isn't the privacy issue, nor is it just a phone tapping issue, it's about the power of the people to govern themselves being given slowly to the central government, to do with what they may.
Now I'm not trying to say anything to be radical here, but I'm just expressing an opinion. I want America to remain the greatest country that the world has ever seen. I want the American people to stand up and take pride in their country. I want to see America DO right and not just debate about who is right. I'm just afraid that we have become too apathetic as a people and have given up too many liberties, just because we don't want to have to deal with the responsibility of having them.