I do not believe that the government and its agencies are the biggest threat to society - I believe that the biggest threat are those who believe that they can do whatever it takes to accomplish their own goals whatever those goals may be. I firmly believe that we need to protect ourselves from such individuals, and the government and its agencies (including law enforcement) are by far the most effective and fair way to do so.
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I'm not sure who or what's the biggest "threat to scoiety". I imagine it depends upon what sort of threat you're talking about. The center of threat changes from moment to moment and in differing situations. There is no locus of threat.
But, directly on to the point, you seem to be -- consistently -- creating a false dichotomy between idealistic lefties who hate the government and oppose all counter terrorist actions on abstract grounds and clear eyed realists.
This isn't where the heart of the real debate lives -- it's in the conflict between those who believe that one set of policies is both effective and non-destructive (for ex: provides counter measures without categorizing the entire population as suspects, as some proposed methods, such as the supposedly canceled "Total Information Awareness" system was designed to do...there are other examples) and that another, rather different method set possesses these qualities.
In fact, as I write, I believe my single biggest disagreement with you is over how you define the terms of the debate -- it's almost always Silly Idealists vs. The Rational with, as near as I can tell from your posts on this topic, nearly anyone questioning current methods and practices being a silly idealist knee jerkingly opposed to "the gummit".
My opposition to many (if not most) of the methods deployed so far is based on a belief that they are:
a.) ineffective (for ex: searching bags in the NY subway system) b.) likely to fail in predictable ways having an impact upon the innocent.
"Likely to fail in predictable ways" is the key sentence here. As I said before, creating a shoot to kill policy without also working overtime to make sure your information is laser precise and your personnel were steady created a predictable systems failure that deprived a man of his life.
The failure was predictable because of known factors such as fear, lingering racialism, the immediacy of the tube bombings and so on. An awareness of the ways these plans will most likely fail and advocacy for a greater amount of caution (or, even better, alternate techniques) is not starry eyed idealism, it is, in fact a competing type of hard nosed realism.
So, please stop with the constant dredging up of what appears to be your favorite straw man -- the soft headed lefty who mis-identifies the threat -- and recognize the possibility that what you're in favor of is not the best method for dealing with the problem.
.d.
-- http://monroelab.net/ <<<<<>>>>> groove to my groove