Oh really? Please show me in the Constitution where the words "police state" are mentioned.
"Unconstitutional" has become a lazy way to dress up a claim that something is bad. I'm not saying that what's going on with surveillance in the U.S. is a good thing, but you're not helping your cause here.
(For that matter, there's nothing about a "right to overthrow [a] corrupt government" in the Constitution either. nullsocket may be thinking of the Declaration of Independence, and its basis in the social contract theory of Locke's Second Treatise on Government.)
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
There is a rile of thumb when thinking about what the Framers had in mind: "What would King George do?"
King George did have redcoats going around searching homes, opening mail, etc. in "problem" areas. He did run a police state. It is very likely the Framers wrote the Constitution with that in mind.
If it's any consolation, had they grown up in the hills of waziristan, they would have the blessing of the USG on behalf of the tax payers[0]. One could even see it as off shoring the revolution.
And seeing how off shoring has gone in general and the state/direction of the economy (and the us economy in particular), it's only a matter of time before the tax payers start demanding/bringing those "jobs" back home ;)
The "revolutionaries" did care, and were quite worried to point out that Parliament had (in their mind) no legal authority to direct the internal affairs of the colonies, and their consistent point throughout was that they wished for nothing more than their "rights as Englishmen".
Eventually they had to shift their goal to outright independence to achieve those ends, but even that shift was accompanied by a detailed list of grievances (known as the Declaration of Independence) illustrating why exactly they felt they had to take that step.
Of course, those who actually bother to read that Declaration will note that it emphasizes that even moderate problems with the government should be accepted as a matter of course.
Their problem was not government, or laws, or anything like that. Obviously so, since otherwise they wouldn't have formed a government with laws after the Treaty of Paris, and then scrapped that government a few years later because it sucked so bad that it needed replaced with an even stronger government that the U.S. still operates under today.
Rather, their problem was the lack of the British Crown's desire (in their view) to uphold Britain's own laws and charters as applied to the colonies.
