Democracy Now devoted Friday 20 Apr 2012 to govt surveillance:

Exclusive: National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney on Growing State Surveillance

Detained in the U.S.: Filmmaker Laura Poitras Held, Questioned Some 40 Times at U.S. Airports

"We Don’t Live in a Free Country": Jacob Appelbaum on Being Target of Widespread Gov’t Surveillance

Whistleblower: The NSA is Lying–U.S. Government Has Copies of Most of Your Emails

Ron Paul 2012, because he only pretends to be a member of the Party of George W. Bush.

I remember an baseball game announcer once commenting as they watched a hitter jog toward first base after hitting into a ground ball out to the infield, that the thing that infuriates managers the most was when hitters don't hustle every time.  One doesn't know when the infielder will uncharacteristically juggle the ball and had the runner been hustling down the baseline, would have been able to beat the throw to first.  The point being that one cannot turn hustle on and off when one needs to.  So one hustles every play, even when 99 out of 100 times, one still gets throw out at first, because there is that 100th time when one gets on base, and that might be the difference between a win and a loss.

The world of intelligence gathering tends to follow the same dynamic.  One doesn't get to just interrogate only people who deserves to be interrogated and who will yield results.  One doesn't get to just tap those phones one knows ahead of time will provide evidence. 

This is driven in part because those who deserve to have law enforcement come down on them tend to have this little quirk of trying to avoid getting caught.  They goal is to appear like they are among the innocent.  So sometimes one has to inquire into the going ons of the innocent in order to find the not-so-innocent.

There is of course the issue that some people are engaged in legal activities and are being harassed by forces within the government because they are, as the saying goes, speaking truth to power.  But that is just part of the story, not the entire story.  Which is what some want to make it. Like trying to make it seem like some grand evil that the occupy movement was being kept under surveillance.  Back to the dynamics of the game, it doesn't matter if 99% of the occupiers were peaceful - it is those 1% that need to be rooted out*.  Just as in the case of the 1% who would bomb abortion clinics or shoot abortion doctors.  Or blow up a federal building in Oklahoma City.

(*and it never ceases to amaze me that people who decide to wear masking representing an individual who utilized bombing buildings as a means of protest are surprised that they are going be put surveillance by the government.)

Of course there are going to be jerks and worse within the intelligence and law enforcement agencies.  There has been abuse of power.  And then some.  But as another saying goes, one shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Now if one just want to shut the federal government altogether, then there is that.  But if one is going to accept there is some kind of federal government, then there is going to be the need for an intelligence agency of some sort.  And if it is going to be effective, it is going to have to at times and in certain circumstances disregard the privacy of individuals, some of which may end up being innocent of any wrongdoing.

The question becomes just where is the line drawn.  Just as the police can conduct a search and seizure, just not an illegal search and seizure, and just what constitutes an illegal one is still be debated, and will continue to be debated as long as the Republic continues.

And everybody draws the line a little different.  And rightly or wrongly, most of the public tend to disregard the grand principles and stick to the particulars, hence the outrage over what seems to be an obvious killer or molester going free because of a "technicality." Moreover, a good portion of the public put a large value on what one may call law and order perspective.

One hears often about how people were sooo upset when Bush did this, but keep quiet now that it is Obama.  But the reality was that most people didn't get too bent out of shape when Bush did it either.  As the blogger Kevin Gosztola points out himself, Obama "voted for this immunity [for the telecommunication companies] in the FAA in 2008, when he was running for president."  And it didn't do him much harm at all.  I would posit that for many of those who would say if asked the immunity shouldn't be given to them, didn't lose any sleep over the issue or when the immunity was given.

Gallup did a nice review of the polls in 2006 inquiring into whether people approved of Bush's wiretapping practices after 9/11. 

The data suggest four conclusions:

• Although it is impossible to determine the precise effect of different question wording on the measurement of public opinion about wiretapping, it appears polls that reference "the National Security Agency" or "the government" may elicit a higher positive response than those that reference the Bush administration by name.
•  
• Regardless of wording, the preponderance of the most recent polling evidence on wiretapping shows at least a plurality, if not a small majority, of Americans favor or approve of the program.
•  
• Regardless of wording, it appears that attitudes on this issue are fairly well-grounded, with variation in the percentage approving of wiretapping varying across a range of less than 10 percentage points.
•  
• All of this suggests that if the wiretapping program were put to a national referendum, it would be close, that the results might well depend on just how the issue was phrased and framed in the referendum wording, but with the probability that it would be a positive vote.

Given that Bush's own approval ratings were much lower than this, there were a chunk of people who disapproved of Bush but were approving  of his wiretapping.

So maybe if one is looking for a winning metaphor, one is going to have to look elsewhere than expressing outrage over the surveillance state.  There are just too many people who think that Poitras being detained over 40 times is just the price - the hustle of the intelligence biz - we have to pay to keep us all safe - besides they would say, she hasn't been "disappeared."  She is out there giving interviews and still making her films.