Last month, President Obama said "You can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience," Obama said. "We're going to have to make some choices as a society. ... There are trade-offs involved." Reuters (6/7/13).
When you drive your car -- anywhere -- you are making a calculation that the value of making the trip outweighs the inevitable risk of death or serious injury that everyone runs when they are on the road.
No one was asking the government to deliver 100% security, 100% privacy, and 0 inconvenience. No adult would ever expect that in their own lives, hence my example about the automobile. The critics of the security state as foolish children, wanting everything but being willing to give away nothing.
We have an image of the omniscient, omnipotent Terrorist -- this of course has its uses in justifying huge expenditures to assemble a digital dossier on every American. But au fond it's a lie.
People who refuse to be afraid cannot be terrorized. (Bruce Schneier makes this point well here).
But we've endorsed fear at every turn. And we have endorsed self-ignorance, which breeds fear. We console ourselves with the illusion of freedom, when bit by bit our entire civic discourse has come under universal surveillance.
In a classic example of what we tolerate in the name of the illusion of freedom, General James R. Clapper went down to Congress and lied. Worse yet, he was such a bad liar that he was readily exposed as such: From Forbes (7/02/13):
Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Wyden asked.
“No sir,” responded Clapper at the time. “Not wittingly.”
The transcript doesn't do justice to the halting, head-scratching Clapper as he struggles (I'd say unsuccessfully) for some kind of non-perjury response. For this he was rightly ridiculed, not by any our glorious mainstream press, but rather on the
Daily Show ("No spy should have that big a tell.).
In fact, records released by Edward Snowden (Traitor! Goldstein!) showed that in at least one case, the NSA had actually ordered information on stateside Americans only, and specifically ordered the exclusion of foreign material. (Forbes (6/5/13).
We blind ourselves to the many weaknesses of terrorists, one of which is that they are by nature very poor criminals.
There have been at least three notable vehicle bombings, the 1993 WTC attack and Oklahoma City attacks, and the 2010 Times Square attempted bombing, where the bombers rented or purchased vehicles which could be and were traced back to them by VIN marks on the vehicle components.
Why not just steal the vehicles?
Consider the 2011 Spokane MLK Day attempted bombing. The bomb components lead directly back to the bomber, who among numerous other mistakes, had purchased the components with a debit card traceable back to himself. (source).
Why do terrorists make these bonehead mistakes? (Shahzad actually locked the keys to the getaway vehicle (along with his own house keys) in the bomb vehicle.)
Their view of themselves as leaders in exile, does not permit them to think of themselves as mere criminals, and so they do not train themselves in the numerous skills necessary to become a successful criminal, such as car theft, money laundering. disguise, and flight.
In this country, and any other country with a functioning civil law enforcement system, the only "successful" terrorists have been careful to commit the act on territory well-known to them. Scouting a location itself is risky, and suspicious conduct at the time of the crime could lead to post-attack detection and perhaps even frustration of the attack.
Hence, it was not a coincidence that Lincoln was shot in Ford's Theater -- John Wilkes Booth, who would be called a terrorist if that word had existed then, practically lived there. In 1998, the Columbine attackers choose their own high school. Even the 9/11 attacks occurred first on the highly internationalized space of airliners, where the attackers, particularly with the flight training had obtained, would have good familiarity with the area as those attacked.
All this digital surveillance might be one thing if there was actually a delivery of security -- which of course there hasn't been -- unless you credit the testimony of another general, Keith Alexander, who claims that since 9/11, (Reuters (6/18/13):
"In recent years these programs, together with other intelligence, have protected the U.S. and our allies from terrorist threats across the globe to include helping prevent ... potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11.
If you parse that statement carefully, General Alexander didn't actually say that any stateside terrorist attacks had been prevented -- he didn't even use the word "attack".
As to whatever was prevented, he was careful to use the phrase "potential terrorist events", whatever that means.
Worse yet, there's no comparison of whether this hideous beast we've created would do any better than ordinary investigations, particularly considering the huge resources that have been devoted to surveillance.
No one's asking for instructions on how to build a bomb or forge a passport. Just treat us like adults and tell us enough information so that we can judge for ourselves whether results are justified by the huge resources and power we've given the government.