Sam -
Since the govt appears to have very little interest in the 'traditional protections' and checks/balances, and considers trading my civil rights for weak to non-existent "safety", until the traditional protections/checks/balances are restored, my only option (other than to press for a restoration of proper operation of the three branches of government) is to keep information away from them...in particular...bad information. Which is to say, most of it.
We wont stop terrorism. But we will stop large organized plots. Those involve a lot of people. Theres a money trail. There are actions taken that are noteworthy. Products bought. Training taken.
We had all the info we needed to identify the 9/11 attack before it happened. That we didnt act wasnt due to a lack of data or information, theory and knowledge. It was because it wasnt taken seriously and the people who had the piece parts didnt want to talk to each other.
Pouring phone numbers and call information, library books, medical test records, dental records, and other consumer information into a mass database for perusal solves none of those problems that kept us from stopping 9/11. And all of those problems still exist.
So while I know a lot of people take the attitude that the government can perform daily invasive rectal exams on them if it prevents terrorism, a lot of others know that the actions currently being taken are about as beneficial.
The good news is that we're spending billions of dollars on it, so the terrorists dont need to attack anything. They can sit back and watch cartoons while we hack away at our civil rights, demolish our faith in our government, live in constant fear that is sponsored by our own elected officials, and pour a trillion dollars down the drain.
Nothing at all, short of a successful dirty bomb or nuclear detonation in a major city, could do as much damage as we've done to ourselves within our own borders and between the US and just about every other country in the world. Besides savaging the bill of rights and deeply dividing our people, we've turned what was almost universal sympathy on 9/12 to almost universal distrust and hatred in just a few short years.
And the solution is to cut into our rights and collect more flakey data?
I think not.
2B - I dont care if it was clinton, democrats, bush, republicans, karl rove, the beaver cheese society or little green men. Liberals or conservatives, bible thumpers or gun nuts.
It really makes no difference who started it. Or why.
I used to run into the same thing in business. We'd collect what we knew was faulty data and then try to make business decisions on it. In a lot of cases, all it took was a little intelligence.
How about instead of millions, billions and trillions spent on what we're doing now, we x-ray all airline checked baggage, look in every cargo container that comes into the US, improve our border controls and lock up the sealanes off of our coasts. Dont let people into the country without taking a hard look at them, and find and get them out when their visa's expire. Tear up the homeland security bureaucracy and stop the interdepartmental horseshit once and for all.
You can still run a small boat up to one of our more barren coastlines and unload ten guys and a dirty bomb or a nuke. If you're smart and careful, you can get away with it 90-something percent of the time. Heck, a million tons of drugs get into the country every year and our best efforts havent stopped THAT.
Until we stop those big problems, downloading who I called on the phone doesnt even make the top 100 of the list of good things to do to detect and stop terrorists.
