HailTheLeaf said:

The NSA has to keep banning things and thinking up ridiculous searches to create the illusion of safety for the general public, when in fact the goverment is completely powerless in preventing another terrorist attack. Actually, they aren't completely powerless, they could change their foreign policy.

Good job, instead of copying an article from alternet, you just reworded the article head.

http://www.alternet.org/story/40437/
"The Transportation Security Administration exists not to prevent terrorists from bringing down planes but to prevent passengers from realizing the government is powerless over such catastrophes. "

We are not powerless to stop it, but we can only stop what has been done before and what we believe might be next. Its like anti-virus software for a computer. It will stop things that have been used in the past. People (hackers or what not) will then find new ways around the software to infect a computer. So, software companies then have to go back and improve again. Its an on-going cycle.