“reasonable S&S”
My concern is that those in power will always find a way to abuse this. They always seem to be able to create trumped up charges against “enemies.” And by “enemies”, I don’t mean terrorists and criminals, I mean political opponents, conservatives, Christians, and anyone not on board with the liberal agenda.
Maj. Hasan, the Ft. Hood killer, was communicating openly and practically spelled out his intentions. Many in authority were fully aware of this and did nothing to prevent it.
The government is not using their current ability to snoop on us to protect us. They are using it for their own political purposes.
In addition, privacy goes down the drain even at low levels. You can count on it that your cranky neighbor or brother-in-law will snoop into your medical records, tax records, DMV records or whatever if he has a job that gives him access.
No disagreement. I just don’t see any way to prevent this type of stuff from happening.
Those who work at places where they have access to supposedly private information have always snooped. Witness all the private eye shows where the PI can always get supposedly confidential information from a friend in the police department. All electronics has done is make misuse of data much easier, just as it’s made proper use of data much easier.
Major Hassan was not stopped before his spree simply because doing so would have been “racial profiling,” and therefore nobody had the guts to act. In fact, most who saw such tendencies probably didn’t recognize them in a form of doublethink they not even aware of.
Had Hassan been arrested before going on his spree, we might well have had a media furore about racial profiling, Islamaphobia in the armed forces, etc. Only the spree would have justified his arrest in liberal eyes, and of course he hadn’t done that yet.
Just as a similar uproar would have occurred if 9/11 had been prevented by keeping the hijackers from boarding. Since nobody would know what had been prevented, the racial profiling and discrimination would have been completely unjustified.