A net as big as the sea

Picture a fishing net as large as the sea. In it, all the fish of the sea are “caught.” Yet the net is so big it’s impossible to pluck out a fish for dinner. That’s the situation the security agencies find themselves in.

Have you seen the list of words that watch for in electronic communication? It’s about every fourth word written. Everyone becomes a potential terrorist.

The TSA treats everyone like they are carrying a bomb, which is silly. It’s a huge waste of energy, time and money with too wide a focus for ever succeeding. As a social control mechanism it might have some merit -teaching people how to act like sheep. For finding terrorists it has failed 100% of the time.

Maybe they should be like the FBI and make their own. That’s much easier than finding them in the wild. Every “terrorist cell” they’ve busted was nothing without their government informer. He’s the guy with the plans and the connections to weapons and bombs.

Now there are two forces at work here. Some in those spook agencies want to narrow the suspect list to where it’s actually useful for finding potential threats. The problem is that by their very nature, security people are paranoid. They fear someone slipping through their net, so they keep making it bigger.

It’s the same problem with their definition of “threat.” Is it a group of ideologically driven desperate men, AK in one hand while building a bomb with the other? Maybe. Perhaps at one time. The net just keeps on getting bigger and bigger until it scoops up everyone who’s ever said anything bad against the government or those paranoid spook agencies.

Where does this all end? Do we keep going down this path until we live in Orwellian surveillance state where even the word for “freedom” is downgraded. (Wait, has that already happened?) Does the whole system fall apart under the weight of its own bureaucracy? Will it come to an end the way McCarthyism and the Red Scare ended? Back then a few honorable men and women said “for shame” and ended that embarrassing time. The McCarthyism net had gotten too big.

Sixbears