As an amateur hacker in high school and an Internet professional throughout my adult life, I was painfully and acutely aware of governmental attempts to pass or enact some sort of key escrow system(s) to bypass legitimate use of encryption by private citizens.

That I believe the government has the means to break most publicly and commercially available encryption, if they so desire, is one thing -- though the NSA would never admit it -- but that the government has succeeded in bypassing the protections afforded to private citizens by the Constitution against unreasonable search and seizure is another.

It riles me greatly.

It riles me that there are those who believe that what I do in private is any of the government's business, and it annoys me that those who claim to call themselves "conservatives" are so nonchalant regarding invasions of privacy expressly forbidden by the entire body of American law.

What self-respecting "conservative" would want the government watching them take a shit, talk to their girlfriend or spouse, or worse, lawyer. Do you want the government to see you "spanking it"? I ask this directly to our favorite authoritarian wankers, Proximity Warning and Shooter242.

Is a surveillance state the state you crave? Do you want a government who craves to view, voyeuristically, our ever act, misdeed, moment of vulnerability, weakness, moment of joy, passion, ecstasy?

Anecdotally, however, I will share this story, perhaps to put at ease some, like me, who dread this: in the middle of the 1990s a couple of friends of mine were subject to the first ever "official" ISDN wiretap. It took several tries, and surely thousands of dollars in man hours plus equipment, to get it right. When my friends were eventually charged and tried, the evidence that damned them was ultimately the stuff of traditional, old-fashioned police work -- witness testimony, and a seizure, pursuant to a search warrant, of their computers.

The point is that old fashioned police work is always better than fancy, contrived fishing expeditions.

As I knew, as my friends knew, as surely al-Qaeda knows, the "wire" cannot be trusted. Any organization, conspiracy or criminal enterprise which is truly to be feared, an effective criminal enterprise, understands this.

Don't say shit on the phone, don't hack from your house, hide your tracks.

I won't go into details as to just what finally took my friends down, but it was a common error, and one that wiretapping would have never caught.

I will neither confirm nor deny; there are many other ways a common criminal will seal his or her fate -- that's why I wisely decided to divorce myself from that "scene."

I do agree with your assessment of the nature of police work, good old fashioned police work requires work, guile and cunning to match the criminals it aims to entrap.

Moreover, if your focus is on wide-spread collection, then your focus is probably not on real detective work. I would go so far as to say that widely-cast fishnets of collection damages our ability to detect, analyze and mitigate potential criminal conspiracies. The noise/signal ratio is skewed toward the former, and it takes time an resources away from the real meat and potatoes of both police work and intelligence gathering.

Like the theory that somehow the Iraq war will foment Democracy in the Middle-East, the theory that casting a wide net will garner better intelligence is at best foolhardy and at worst ultimately damaging and dangerous.

And take Ron Paul with you!

Wow, blown away by your comment. Thank you,

Greenwald is a lawyer, and his better writing basically reads legalistically - humourless, literal, bereft of imaginition, and to the point. But it's embarrasing when he trys to put lipstick on the pig.

I have to admit that I, to some degree, agree with you here.

I feel that Glenn is not fully comfortable with being ironic or sarcastic.

However, in Glenn's defense, I think there is good reason to shy away from, or be very careful with that sort of dialog.

To be so overly sarcastic is to swim in the pool of broad generalizations, to lob the mud from the poisoned river-bed of invective rhetoric at ones adversary.

I think Glenn's overall point is that this is the de rigeur level of discourse from the far right, aimed at the center and left. Mudslinging, framing your opponent as a clown or a fool, that is par for the course. And of course, the mud in invariably slung back.

I respect Mr Greenwald's obvious distaste for those tactics.

That I sometimes relish those same tactics belies a personal weakness in myself.

Reading the comments section of Greenwald's column shames me into avoiding my worst impulses to be derisive and divisive. Even you, even Shooter, even, Yahweh bless him, David Sugarman often remind me to hold my tongue.

But, and I believe this sincerely, "you started it." :)

Sheeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

Show me a politician who hasn't bumped into some scumbag huckster, then you'll have a *real* story on your hands.

when i saw michael in the ambush on omar, i thought for sure he was going to catch a bullet right then and there.

Yeah, Clinton was real courageous in 2003 when the AUMF was up for voting.

Sorry, Clinton fails. Obama wins.