 |
| Headquarters of the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The director of the National Security Agency told Congress on Wednesday that “dozens” of terrorism threats had been halted by the agency’s huge database of the logs of nearly every domestic phone call made by Americans, while a senator briefed on the program disclosed that the telephone records are destroyed after five years. Source: NYT
Dozens of terrorist threats? Not just the odd panty-bomber one-off? Dozens?
If there have been dozens of terrorist threats, the danger of terrorism in the USA is much greater than we have thought. Here are the urgent questions no one dares ask:
* Were these terrorist threats from domestic or foreign persons or groups?
* Is there a discernible ethnic/racial/ideological profile to these "dozens" of acts, or are they truly widespread and random?
* If there is an identifiable profile, what are we doing to design immigration policies to help make sure we don't make a bad situation worse?
Questions no-one's asking. To do so would be in bad taste. It might offend sensibilities, and we would rather have blown-off limbs than cause emotional distress.
Instead, as Mark Steyn points out, we substitute rational
public policy for a massive program of off-the-grid domestic surveillance.
And that's the way the Ball bounces.
