I'm a person who hates giving up rights. Seeing how precious freedoms were taken away in Nazi Germany, Stallinist USSR, the Arab world, most of Africa, etc., etc., I hate the prospect of rights being taken by "the leadership."
However, one has to be realistic. We are facing a world where insane individuals can now kill thousands. If nothing is done or if typical government incompetence does not take every threat serious, you find extreme criticism that the government is even in on it. See the whacky "bush did 9/11" thread here on SI.
The only way, and I'm not even sure of that, that 9/11 could have been prevented would be for the intelligence community to eliminate their own incompetence in information sharing and increase their budget perhaps 10 fold and evaluate each and every threat, resulting in the arrest of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands.
Just think of the enormity of the problem. Patrolling the web alone would probably lead to 10,000 "chatter" threats a day.
I think the US and the UK are doing a decent job. It's a major problem and I think you should recognize it as you often seem to post moderately and have an eye towards being objective.
I'll be there with my UZI and habeas corpus when I find government rounding up "politicial enemies" in the name of security but we are no where near that at this point. |
