Surveillance Is on the Rise, Straining Carriers

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The number of telephone wiretaps from 2000 to 2004 authorized by state and federal judges increased by 44%, the Wall Street Journal reports, in part because of a rise in terrorism investigations after 9/11, and because the Patriot Act extended surveillance to Internet providers. All the surveillance activity can put a strain on carriers. 'Smaller telecom companies in particular have sought help from outsiders in order to comply with the court-ordered subpoenas, touching off a scramble among third parties to meet the demand for assistance', the WSJ reports, adding, 'Government surveillance has intensified even more heavily overseas, particularly in Europe. Some countries, such as Italy, as well as government and law-enforcement agencies, are able to remotely monitor communications traffic without having to go through the individual service providers. To make it easier for authorities to monitor traffic, some also require registering with identification before buying telephone calling cards or using cybercafes.'"

It is the balance of fears

[mi]

The balance between security and privacy is affected by fear. On hand, there is a fear of government's abuse and misuse, on the other — that of the foreign enemies and domestic criminals.

Of these factors, only the fear of terrorists (foreign and and domestic) has risen noticably in recent years. Hence the willingness of the citizens of democracies to accept their governments' attempts to prevent new attacks.

Fourth amendment

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, there's a reason the fourth amendment exists. This BS of "if you have nothing to hide, you don't need privacy" is crap. Why are people ok with handiong power over to the state. What happens when a bad president gets elected? Who honestly think that can't happen? Right now Bush may be good, but many of his supporters will say clinton/democrats are bad. And vice versa. The point is, once the state has all this power good luck trying to curb abuses.

Second, all humans have an INHERENT right to privacy. Even the constution alludes to that when it says the "right against unreasonable searches without warrants shall not be violated"

All of us have the responsibility of ensuring that innocent humans are not harmed by overzealous and wrong "security" measures. How is it in the nation's interest for all her citizens to have to explain to God why tyranny was carried out in the name of security?

Terrorists don't deserve due process or privacy .. nobody will dispute that. The problem is that the innocent do, and it's the burden and responsibility of the free to ensure it. Many have forgotten Ben Franklin's words "those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither".

Authorized

[truthsearch]

The number of telephone wiretaps authorized by state and federal judges increased by 44%

And how many more were not authorized?

Fear, fear, fear and more fear.

[revscat]

The #1 theme of the Bush administration has been fear: terrorists, they say, are an existential threat so dire that any and all means used to oppose them are justified.

No.

Various nations have seen and defeated far worse threats than terrorism. Liberty is not a weakness, it is a strength. A robust and fair justice system is not a weakness, it is a strenghth. Democracy is not a weakness, it is a strength. Combined they serve as the absolute best form of not only protecting ourselves from others but protecting ourselves from ourselves.

I wholly reject the notion that the threat posed by "terrorism" is so substantial as to justify any tactic. I am not afraid, and I will not be goaded into fear by the government. I will fight, but I will fight for liberty, justice, and democracy, and will oppose all efforts to undermine them, whether from abroad or at home. I hope those of like mind throughout the civilized world will do similarly.

Re:Careful.....

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

You're wasting your breath. There are a lot of NASCAR dads and soccer moms out in McMansionville, USA who welcome such overreach (you know for the sake of the children) ... this is why the current crop of bastards are in power after all. Nothing is going to change as long as the suburbanites can feed their SUVs and can continue to borrow against their rising home equity to buy toys from China.

Re:Careful.....

[david.given]

So, our government(s) are slowly, methodically, chipping away at individual freedoms under the guise of "protecting" us.

Actually, I don't believe they are. I don't think it's anything like as systematic; I think instead that the problem is far more fundamental --- the democratic system of government, with elections every few years, means that:

• Elected officials are taught not to think in the long term. If there is a problem, they need to do something now --- and doing anything is better than doing nothing.
• Non-elected officials are taught not to pay any attention to elected officials, because they're not going to be around long enough to matter.

So you end up with a series of knee-jerk reactions to every minor crisis that comes along. Your intelligence services (with their blinkered view of the real world) are pressuring you to give them greater powers so that they can gather more information; your political advisors (who only care about keeping you elected) are pressuring you to do something to keep your ratings up; you can't think of anything else to do, and doing nothing is not an option.

So I don't think there is any organised conspiracy of the New World Order trying to control the world via mind-control lasers and chips in people's heads. I think what you're seeing is simply the emergent effect as entropy builds up in your political system.

Increasing the noise level

[HangingChad]

One of the problems of trying to monitor a population the size of the US is the sheer volume of information and the time it takes. You may be able to wiretap world+dog but there still has to be someone analyzing that information and listening to those calls. Even with speech compression and automated key word logging, there's still a boggling amount of time involved. Someone has to listen, decide it's relevant, figure out which jurisdiction the case belongs to and who should get the data. Then get a supervisor's approval to release the information.

With all the increase in wiretaps, all we've really done is bury the important intercepts under mountains of useless data. Like out of all the Bush wiretapping, how many warrants were actually issued? It wasn't that many, less than 20 if memory serves. Out of thousands of wasted man hours combing through wiretap intercepts. Not to mention the potentially crippling political backlash from an electorate that really doesn't like being spied on by anyone, especially their own government.

This is FEMA and Iraq all over again in intelligence gathering. It's insane, likely illegal and it's not going to work right, ever. So it's illegal AND stupid. What a combination.

Hopefully we'll get smart before spending ourselves into a hole we can never get out of, but I'm not holding my breath. This is the country where 52% of the population can't tell the difference between a real war veteran and a draft dodging, Conneticut frat boy prentending to be a religious fighter pilot from Texas.

44% increase in 4 years?

[funwithBSD]

Just goes to show how chicken little the left really is on this subject.

Let me get this straight, wiretaps have not EVEN DOUBLED since 911, despite the war, despite so called invastions of privacy, and you want to cry more about it?

Personally, sounds like they have not done enough wiretapping, I would have expected a doubling or tripling of wiretaps.

Instead I find they are very restrained in their requests.

FYI: here is the baseline for 1999 and why they were tapping. 890 were for narcotics, and only 45 landed in the "other" catagory that was not a criminal investigation.

http://www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/2000_rep ort/table300.pdf [epic.org]

in 2004, 1308 were for narcotics, so there is the growth of 44 percent. Other grew to 64, also an approximately 44% increase.

http://www.uscourts.gov/wiretap04/Table3-04.pdf [uscourts.gov]

64 people in a population of 250 million. THAT is restraint, not taking peoples liberty.

Yes I know that does not include the so called "illegal wiretaps" by the President. I am not too worried unless the taps were not on inbound international calls from known terrorists calling people here in the US. If that is what they are, then there is no crime in doing that.

Anything else and they have to explain it.

Re:Careful.....

[lawpoop]

" So, how bad does it have to get before we revolt?"

There's a saying that goes something like "people with full bellies don't revolt."

What has to happen, in order for some kind of revolution, is that the daily grind for most people has to become such a losing proposition that they would rather march around in the streets instead of go to work that day.

Personally, I think the collapse of the dollar would be the most likely scenario that would bring about major change in the US in the next 10 years.

Re:Careful.....

['nother poster]

We shouldn't have to revolt. That's what elections, and checks and balances are for. Changing the behavior of the government. As long as we elect these fools and puppets to office, we are simply getting what we deserve. Pissed that politicians are serving the desires of corporations rather than the citizens of the U.S.? Vote the bastards out. If they don't get voted out then most of the people in the districts that they represent must like what the politicians they elect are doing. They may be fools for electing the politicians they do, but they are fools that are free to ruin their lives as they see fit.

Re:Who is at fault?

[robertjw]

Hell, you don't have to go all the way to the Middle East to find someone who hates me. There are people much closer than that, should we be spying on them too?

The FAULT lies with the US Government and the US citizens. Yes, certain groups in the middle east have done horrible things, and we have no/little control over what they do. OTOH, we have complete control in how we respond.

Search Me

[Doc Ruby]

All the surveillance is worth it, because we've caught all the terrorists! I feel safer knowing we've got all those Qaeda evildoers. I'm finally satisfied that we've caught Osama in our dragnet. And the byproduct, catching all the drug mafia, has really cleaned up the streets - and our nation's veins. So we've made some Quakers paranoid - they live to quake, right? And, in an unexpected bonus, the Republicans won't be taken by surprise by any Democratic Party dirty tricks [google.com]. If only we'd let Emperor Nixon protect us, in his wisdom, we'd have all the oil we want [sfgate.com], and terrorists would never have attacked us [cfrterrorism.org].

To quote a great leader

[Tengoo]

Freedom 9/11 victory 9/11 lurks freedom internets 9/11!

Thought crimes are now.

[Belial6]

"What is next? Thoughtcrimes?"

Actually we have had thoughtcrimes for a while. I'm sure others can add other examples, but the "Hate Crime" laws are specifically and solely thoughtcrime laws. For example, you might get a year for lighting someones lawn on fire. This act, even if it was designed to intimidate the homeowner because you hate them, might still only get you a year. BUT, if you light the fire in the shape of a swastika, you are likely to get 6 years. This means that you will spend 5 years in prision not because you destroyed their property, you threatened them, or even because you hate them. You will spend 5 years in prison because of your beliefs. Because of your "thoughts".

Now, don't think I am trying to defend neo-nazis or anything. I think that the person that picked a victim out of a phonebook and decided to intimidate them and destroy their property should get the same sentence. No one should sit in jail because of their beliefs. Even if I think their beliefs are vile.

Re:Careful.....

[LilGuy]

I'd say sooner than 10 years the way the world is heating up around us. China will be dwarving us in their shadow within that amount of time (they could crush us right now by not taking our debt if they wanted to, but that wouldn't help them grow to their full potential), we will still be complaining about a lack of oil as Russia uses their deep-well technology to catch up with Saudi Arabia's 2 trillion barrel reserves (and projects to sustain it for the next century), and more urgently Iran may fight back just hard enough to break our morale completely when we try to force their hand. America is looking pretty hobbled these days, and I can only pray we wake up before the shit hits the fan once and for all. We have been lied to for so long now, the thought of rejecting any of it would mean rejecting a part of our lives, which is an incredibly hard thing for a normal human to do. We Americans are GOOD people. We have terrible leadership, and we have become apathetic and lazy, but letting the so called 'leaders' give us our milk and tell us when to take naps, as they go out and rape, murder, and pillage in our names is intolerable.

The internet is really the only hope we have left of breaking this downward spiral before its TOO LATE and someone else does it for us - and mind you, they're quickly catching on to that idea. I hate sounding like a paranoid freak, but goddamnit that's exactly how this whole shebang works. If you believe in our military-approved medias, you've got a lot of catching up to do. Read as much about everything going on in the world as you can from as many different sources as you can. You still never get a complete picture, but its like getting lasek eye surgery after wearing coke bottle glasses for 10 years.

Oh and I've turned off scores on all comments and set up my preferences to make them all as near to 0 as I can get. I just realized how much valuable insight can be completely missed by skimming all the highly rated comments. Try it sometime.

scarier overseas

[slackaddict]

Some countries, such as Italy, as well as government and law-enforcement agencies, are able to remotely monitor communications traffic without having to go through the individual service providers.

I think this is much more interesting than the constant railing against our government's efforts to monitor terrorist and foriegn government agent communication. At least in this country there are several hands this information has to go through. Like the article says, outside of the U.S., governments have the ability to monitor communication directly.

I know that Slashdot is left-leaning and apparently never misses an opportunity to post a "see, President Bush sux0rs!!!!" story and this is just par for the course. Do you think that other liberal administrations haven't monitored communication in this country? As a matter of fact, if you think back over all administrations we've had, which administrations have done more to hurt this country rather than help or protect it? Jimmy Carter's giveaway of the Panama Canal, hostage crisis disater, energy policy disaster, coverup of the three-mile island disaster or remarks that there was no need to apologize for Viet Nam? Bill Clinton's transfer of missle technology to China, bombing an asprin factory and killing the janitor, ignoring an opportunity to capture Osama Bin Laden when he was offered, and (since everyone likes to point out lies) lieing under oath and being impeached? L.B.J./Kennedy starting the Vient Nam war or his remarks about Thurgood Marshall - "Son, when I appoint a nig**r to the court, I want everyone to know he's a nig**r."?

The fact is, President Bush will be trashed no matter what he does or doesn't do. National Protection? He's infringing on civil liberties!! Natural Disasters? He didn't move fast/more/personally or did too much. (Didn't he plant explosives and blow up the dikes himeself?)

Some minor problems with that

[RealProgrammer]

In David Brin's book "Earth" he talks about a future society with zero privacy. However rather than the Orwellian 1984 version of no privacy, he talks about a world where everyone, from the farmer in the field, to the president of the united states having zero secercy.

One trouble with that, as with all utopian visions, is that implementation never follows design. As Communism inexorably devolves into dictatorial oligarchy, a select few would have privacy while the rest lived as slaves to the Eye.

Even if that weren't to happen, democratic tyranny would be unavoidable. If everyone knows what everyone else is doing, a sheeplike uniformity would be the result, with any oddballs subjected to public disgrace. "You painted your bathroom what color? Weirdo!" "Look, he's got a flashlight under the covers! He's doing something private under there! Pervert!" "You spanked your child? Abuse! Abuse!"

Some of the greatest joys in life are private. A quiet conversation with a spouse. Reading a bedtime story to a wide-eyed child. Singing off-key in the car. Posting anonymous trolls on Slashdot.

The right to privacy is not just an invention of the courts to justify abortion, though some read Roe v Wade that way. Privacy is infused in the Bill of Rights, from the right to practice religion as we see fit, the right not to have troops in our homes, the right to own weapons, and the right to be secure in our "persons, houses, papers, and effects".

Whether abused by the powerful or not, the world Brin proposes is a totalitarian hell.

Re:44% increase in 4 years?

[Edmund Blackadder]

"I am not too worried unless the taps were not on inbound international calls from known terrorists calling people here in the US. If that is what they are, then there is no crime in doing that."

If that is what they are they would not have to be done illegally because the courts would be glad to issue warrants for them. So it is obvious that that is not what they are.

But it is nice of you to use your imagination to help out the president. I am sure he appreciates it.

I'd rather

[slashdotmsiriv]

Cynicism alert:

I dont know about you, but personally I would rather get used to the idea of having a 9/11 once every 2-4 of years, than give away my real freedoms, not the ones advocated by our Texan Overlord.

Hell, I will ever risk my life and I would bare with the risk of having my kid becoming the victim of a pedofile than allowing those shady people to go through all our personal data (general pornography statistics my arse, google hold on there).

Why no public outcry?

[XMilkProject]

Many posters are trying to come up with explanations as to why the public is not outraged at this Big Brother situation. I would like to provide a very simple and clear reason why the general public does not really care.

The public does not care about these privacy invasions, patriot acts, wiretaps, etc, becuase they hear people whine about how our privacy is being invaded everyday, but it has yet to actually happen.

Let me clarify.

There has yet to be a single major case of someone who wasn't really evil being anything other than mildly inconvienced. If and when some average joe is taken advantage of, or criminally or financially damaged, THEN you will see people upset.

I'm not saying I agree with any of this big brother crap that the government is doing. I'm just saying that so far, they have actually used all of these technologies as they promised to do, and have not targetted anyone innappropriately. Until they do, no real effort to battle these invasions will begin.

Re:Careful.....

[Anonymous Coward]

UCLA's alumni association was offering a bounty on tapes of Professors expressing left-leaning opinions, in case you hadn't heard.

And this is "thought police" how exactly? First of all, I didn't realize UCLA had access to devices that could read peoples thoughts. Otherwise, this would be a "freedom of speech" issue. Even then, freedom of speech does not, in any way, imply freedom from consequence.

A professor is free to say whatever he feels like during class. However, the university is free to can his ass if he often spends time during his "Landscape Architecture 120" class talking about how "Bush is a murderer" or "Clinton screwed up this country" or "why Chevys are better than Fords" simply on the fact that he is not doing what he is being paid to do - and that is teach Landscape Architecture.

The funny thing is, taping lectures used to be a normal activity. You did it as an instructional aid. Now that the premise has changed from "I want to help myself learn" to "I want to make sure I get the $1/minute of education I am paying for", suddenly it is evil? I don't buy that.

The real problem - no accountability

[Animats]

The problem with "wiretapping" in the US today is that the courts aren't in the loop. The way this ought to work is that the actual setup of the wiretap request is made by a court clerk, not law enforcement. The court clerk's office should be automatically logging everything law enforcement is doing. Then, it's possible for the judicial system to verify what law enforcement is doing.

But today's wiretapping system isn't set up that way. The way it actually works is that there's a back door into the routing system for telephony, SS7. The back door is run by private companies, mostly Verisign. Verisign calls this their NetDiscovery Service [verisign.com]. Wiretapping is done by issuing commands to switches (phone, cellular, IP) over the SS7 network.

Take a look at what Verisign describes as the subpoena processing [verisign.com] flowchart. Note that there are no blocks on that chart for the court system. There's no data transfer back to the court system. The "legal review" step is marked as "optional". There's supposed to be a subpoena to start the process, but there's no external validation that what is monitored matches the subpoena.

That's the real problem. We need to put the courts back in the loop. It's wrong for them to be out of it. Courts have an obligation to monitor compliance with their subpoenas, and to oversee law enforcement. They're being denied the tools to do it.

Fight Back

[scottennis]

So, start "straining" the onerous government agencies with FOIA (freedom of information act) requests.

No free ride!

[MrNougat]

Shouldn't the carriers be shouting "No free ride for surveillance!" and charging the gov't a premium for this service?

Re:Why no public outcry?

[smoker2]

There has yet to be a single major case of someone who wasn't really evil being anything other than mildly inconvienced. If and when some average joe is taken advantage of, or criminally or financially damaged, THEN you will see people upset.

And by then, of course, it's far too late to change it - that's why action is needed sooner rather than later.

It's almost like leaving the gate open and your 2 year old playing in the yard - "but it's ok, he never goes out the gate "

Famous last words.

There was a debate about cctv on /. a while back, and the question came up - who watches the watchers ?

Answer - We do !

Ever heard the expression "nip it in the bud" ? Well that means deal with potential problems as they arise, because it will be a whole lot harder when they've taken root.

Re:Why no public outcry?

[Cheeze]

The problem with the current surveillance is it's illegal to talk about it. If you work at a company and the government comes in and requests information or wants to monitor someone, it is against the law for anyone to talk about it or alert the user.

How is there supposed to be any oversight or public outrage if it's illegal to talk about it?

Unfortunately, your numbers are wrong, because

[Anonymous Coward]

as a simple result of your sources, you're only counting the wiretaps that were obtained through the courts.

There are actually more wiretaps-- maybe significantly more wiretaps, it's hard to know?-- happening than that lately, because as Attorney General Alberto Gonzolez tells us, getting a warrant for a wiretap is just too much of a bother.

Re:Fear, fear, fear and more fear.

[Anonymous Coward]

Finnaly somebody understands. This is not a war about killing the enemy it is a war of ideas. Al Qeada has a fundemental disagreement with our way of life and seeks to end it. Everytime we make a concession to our way of life and ideals out of fear of terror we lose a battle in the war. In a war of ideologies the ideology that dies is the one that loses.

"The tree of liberty must be watered by the blood of patriots"
Thomas Jefferson

Our father and grandfathers were not afraid to die for freedom. Our selfish fear of any sort of harm will undo all that they died for.

Re:Misquoting Benjamin Franklin

[Clod9]

The accuracy of your quote is to be admired -- we should always strive for correctness. But the logic of your argument is flawed. The sound bite is just as clear-cut as it always was, and its meaning is exactly what the OP said.

The liberty that is being given up is privacy: our expectation that the government will not send out agents to watch us without oversight. In the Constitution [usconstitution.net] it's worded thusly:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The temporary security to be obtained is the ability to detect more communications between criminals. The reason it's temporary is that the law-breakers are at least as creative as law enforcement agents, so as they learn how to circumvent wiretaps, the effectiveness of the enforcement will wane. Like how most high-ranking terrorists learned to stop using cell-phones when they realized it gave targeting information [swssec.com] to their enemies.

Re:Careful.....

[Urusai]

I predict the collapse of the US economy in 2008. Republicans tend to leave the economy in ruins, and this one is doing a crackerjack job.

Signs of the apocalypse:
1- China floats yuan
2- Gold prices skyrocket
3- Petrodollars become petroeuros
4- Ford and GM go bankrupt/sell out
5- US real estate prices plummet in a wave of bank repos

1 is happening slowly. The Chinese are already adjusting the yuan upward slowly, hoping to avert a sudden collapse of the dollar. 2 looks like it might happen soon; simpletons invest in gold as an inflation hedge. 3 will take awhile, and more likely will happen after the dollar collapse. 4 will happen soon after the second wave of Chinese cars, as the first wave may be laughed off like Hyundai was, although they may have their ducks lined up for a successful first wave. 5 might be mitigated by massive inflation which would erase large amounts of paper debt, although job scarcity might negate that.

IANAE.

What are we to do then?

[cpuenvy]

It is always interesting to read how the Government wants to invade our lives, listen to you talking to your girlfriend about how your day went... Do you people honestly think that this is the goal?

Seriously. If you are talking to someone in Iran about blowing up a site in the US, I want the Government listening to that call. I want the Government protecting me against people who get pissed off over a cartoon and riot for weeks, and want to burn our flag and kill innocent people, even though the cartoon was published somewhere else. These Islamic Extremists are freaking nut jobs (they definately outnumber the homegrown terrorists)... If the Government wants to listen to them, then they have 90% of the US behind them. Read the polls.

Some people get out of hand, and yes, so doesn't the Government. We are the greatest country in the world, and I don't care if anyone thinks differently. We are, and I would fight and die for the US and my way of life if I had to. My freedom and my liberties, my way of life... You can say what you wish, but the fact is that nobody has it as good as the US.

I can only guess what they said when they suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, or imprisoned Japanese during WWII. Whatever the case, what is the Government supposed to do to protect us? There are many arm chair quarterbacks, and many that just hate everything the President does. Clinton did wiretaps, Carter did, JFK did.

Perhaps it is just a case of "You can't please everyone"?

Re:Careful/1776

[SEAL]

You also forget that members of the military, reserves, national guard, etc. are still citizens with friends and relatives. Some of the soldiers would not take kindly to orders directing them to kill other U.S. citizens.

I have to disagree. An overriding theme of most militaries is dehumanization. On the battlefield, the killing of human beings is referred to by disconnected terminology like "taking out a target". A soldier, trained to carry out orders without question will not resist. Even if an order is illegal, a soldier risks jail or execution if he or she cannot prove that fact before a military kangaroo court.

Sounds like you haven't served in the U.S. military. We are, believe it or not, thinking people, not automatons. First of all, we aren't *allowed* to perform police duties on American soil under normal circumstances. But I know even if martial law were declared, many of us would simply refuse to conduct operations against Americans for the purpose that is being discussed here. Would I shoot someone who shot at me first? Sure. But I believe American commanders are smart enough to know their troops don't want to kill other Americans. You'd probably see operations conducted in more of an anti-riot style than a war style - i.e. lockdown with curfews, tear gas and other crowd control measures, ... the whole nine yards.

Re:Careful.....

[PastAustin]

She had every goddamn right to be an asshat.

I am sorry to tell everyone this but it is your right as a citizen of the United States to see your President. Everyone forgets that. It really pisses me off when stuff like this happens. More and more. Public functions! The SOTU address is no different. They should not be allow to tell you what is and isn't allowed at functions such as this. My sister was thrown out of a George Bush rally because she had a John Kerry shirt. Their claim was that the rally was sponsored by the RNC. Well... The RNC didn't pay the police who were at the event. We are all going to be silenced and oppressed if the Republican Party gets their way. They scare us with the whole, "Terrorists have a 20 year plan!!!!!" What is really scary is that George Bush, Inc has a 8 year plan and there's only 3 years left. I predict success.

Having said that the Dems are no better than the Republicans. It's gone from being a system of government to a system of control. Pity. Looks like the United States of American ("by the people for the people") is going to be much more short lived than expected. =/

I want my freedom but everyone else wants their neighbor to be spied on because he bought some fertilizer for his flower garden.

Re:I'd rather

[smellsofbikes]

How about one every 40 days? Coz that's roughly how long it takes for us to kill the same number of people with automobiles that died in the planes and the towers. I don't see Bush invading Detroit to seize and destroy their Weapons Of Mass Destruction, though. We've been killing off 25,000-40,000 people a year for decades with cars, and not only are we not fighting it, we're raising speed limits because we've decided that the death rate is okay and since it was dropping with widespread use of seatbelts and airbags, we, as a country, figured we'd raise it right back up again by driving faster. Convenience is more important than killing people, so yeah, I'd say we can very well afford to ignore a terrorist attack or two.

This isn't about the people who died -- not for the people changing the laws, or ignoring them, it's not. It's about a power grab. There is always an uneasy tension between those who hold the power and those who elected the powerholders. Now that the electorate is scared, it gives the powerholders leeway to push as far as they can, and their ability to push is leveraged by new surveillance techniques.

We need a Right To Privacy Amendment.