Connecting the dots

James Lileks on the Hugh Hewitt Show:

They [the critics of the NSA] want us to connect the dots, but not to collect the dots.

I've maintained for a long time that our most precious civil rights are life and liberty, with privacy quite far behind, which is why the Fourth Amendment says "unreasonable searches and seizures."

The point is being made more and more that, as one of Hugh's callers said, eavesdropping is a realtime job. Think back to all those scenes in movies and TV where federal agents are staking out criminals or running a wiretap. It usually takes two or three agents per shift. Now multiply that by 200,000,000. Then ask yourself who's eavesdropping on the agents themselves, and why you haven't been offered a job at the NSA.

Of course, I doubt they would contact this idiot, who is a victim of his own paranoia and bizarre rhetoric.

John McIntyre seems to have as little patience with these fools as I do.