No. It points out who might have al Qaeda on their speed dial. Any of Mahar Arar's MATLAB clients might, since the government had decided he was al Qaeda.

Granted, the conflation argument was imprecise, however, it still doesn't show that 'this is happening', which is the more important point. And there is a degree to which what you claim this shows is contingent on the assumption that significant carelessness and/or malice is an inextricable feature of data mining, which is an assumption for which there is no evidence, and that isn't intuitive on its face. That point in particular bears on where it would appear you and I disagree. I yet to be shown anything that would persuade me these tactics are beyond salvation.

No. We cannot place blind trust in our leaders to act on our behalf ever. It has nothing to do with their interests, since the law will be there when their interests have changed.

It certainly does have to do with their interest. Their interest in remaining in power, and in promoting the plutocracy or their place in a ruling class is precisely what would lay behind abuse of these powers, and has laid behind abuse of these powers both in this country and throughout human history. It's the historical allusion that makes it important to frame this issue in this way.

No. That would be a theorem, not a FACT. Whether or not the law helps us fight the terrorists requires proof. My guess is that you may not be able to prove this theorem. It would require first defining what a terrorist is, and then defining what "fighting" them means. Once done with that you would have to demonstrate that this law genuinely helps win that fight.

Terrorism has a definition and a terrorist is a practitioner of said, but I won't go to the textbook for this. We both know, or should know what the underlying issue here is. I claim, perhaps because I swallow wild eyed propaganda, that there are people, (such as those that were responsible for planning and carrying out 9/11, or bombing the trains in Spain or the transport in London, etc.), who believe it is in their interest to attack the civilian populations of the West. Some of them are citizens of Western Nations both born and naturalized, (the former at least in the case of Europe), some are not, but I furthermore claim there is documented evidence that many nations have had such people in their midst beknownst and unbeknownst to the citizenry who it was their aim to harm. Now, assuming my staggeringly silly claims are true, whatever you think of these people's grievances or the effectiveness of their merciless attacks on civilians in furthering their aims, I would hope you would agree that most people do not consider slaughtering innocent civilians an appropriate means of public discourse (which is to say, most people consider the civilians killed to be innocent of the grievances these 'terrorists' claim to be aggrieved by).

These are the types whose plots many people feel our government should be in the business of stopping before they occur. I am ashamed to admit I am one of these crazies.

So, hopefully we are past that bit. If not, please take the other side of that. Otherwise, you can try to tell me why having more information about people residing in this country, both foreign and national, will not increase the ability for the government to discover plots before they are carried out. Your argument will have to either take the form of, 1) the government is not interested in preventing these attacks, or 2) intelligence analysts are incapable of gleaning anything from this raw data. If it's 2), I'd love to hear your reasoning. 1), you can save it for another one of this thread's goners.

You missed the part about the influence to foreign policy, then? This bill contains, as Glenn and the ACLU pointed out, no language requiring anyone to be a terrorist to be a target.

I don't get the first sentence, you'll have to clarify (that may mean the answer is yes). In any case, I did mention that the Eliot Spitzers of this world better clean up their act given the new law. The point is that a larger scale manipulation would be more difficult, and in any case, given that the use of such information could reveal its source, risky both politically and otherwise (for example, Republicans are getting completely swept from power in spite of their demolition of the Constitution, if not because of it).

Btw, I'm not claiming to know all the ramifications of this bill. That I made clear. But I am getting the definite feeling that much of this hysteria may be powered by hyperbolic rhetoric, rather than reality (here I'm talking about the hysteria in the comments, that the end of the world is neigh, that we should ignore politics and start a revolution, etc., not Glenn's posts).

You are misreading me if you think I am saying the exclusive purpose of data and mining tools is to anonymously identify targets. Or that a target cannot be identified anonymously that will be fulfilled only by someone whose name is already known.

My point is that the purpose of data mining is to identify targets, or the only sensible one I can think of (although I suppose there is the gray area where new targets can be identified from existing, and thereby advance a case- fraudulent or proper- against existing).

I actually have to run now, but I am going to digest and respond to your most substantive material (that which follows from the last pull quote) when I get back.

Your wit is the envy only of your intellect.