"if you don't allow us to do what we want, you will be slaughtered by the Terrorists or your kids will be destroyed by Drug Lords."

Well, Glenn, it's more likely they say to the telecom folks, "if you don't allow us to do what we want, you will be ruined by us!"

But it is irrelevant. One way or another, they are going to suck up all this information, legal or illegal. Laws are for us peons, not for the ruling class.

What to do? Political action is a waste of time (outside of supporting Ron Paul) because both parties are complicit, as Glenn points out. No one in government will ever go to jail - unless we really do have a revolution.

Here's an idea: do what "they" don't want you to do. Personal action is the key.

Use encryption at least occasionally, even if it's a pain and it's hard to talk your friends into using.

Buy a rifle and learn how to use it. (Either .223 Rem or .308 Win caliber, with at least a thousand rounds of ammo.)

Buy some of Clair Wolfe's books (e.g. "101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution", "Don't Shoot the Bastards (Yet)", etc.). Read and pass them along.

Speak out, call a spade a spade, tell people we're living in a police state. Even if it makes you scared to do so.

Meanwhile read this essay:

"The republic is dead. Not sick, not dying, not failing, or in a gradual decline, not waiting to be resuscitated, but already stone cold dead."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski192.html

Oh, and send Ron Paul a donation today, see teaparty07.com. A real poke in the eye of the ruling class.

He has occasionally stated specific beliefs, but is not willing or able to follow up when asked to explain further or defend them in a give and take debate. I'm not sure why he's here, not sure how old he is, not sure how he even survives in what's becoming an ever more complex world.-- Sole Proprietor

I generally answer questions when addressed directly, as you did earlier. You didn't ask another one. Am I supposed to be reading your mind or someone elses?

Boy, you showed me, Shoot.

How, exactly, is an ability to predict the future required to enhance airport security in the face of hijacking threats?

Nobody ever accused you of being smart, but that was the dumbest thing you've said in a while.

Never mind the fact that you sidestepped a veritable avalanche of far superior refutations on other overconfident assertions you've proudly made today, from others, but the avenue of least resistance you picked is a cul-de-sac.

I wish, fervently, that you wouldn't so grossly underestimate the intelligence of your audience.

You're fact-free again as usual, neocon. Dubya was warned of the 9/11 attacks in advance. If you want the evidence rubbed in your face again, Bushite, just ask. Your lies will go nowhere here.

You could just admit the Bush administration abetted the attacks by suppressing and denying the warnings to ensure that the attacks would succeed. There's plenty of evidence for that.

Take your time, liar. We'll wait.-- walter_map

Uhm, Walter? You're the one offering indisputable evidence. Whatcha got? Heh.

Notice what he doesn't say there - that AT&T is not doing what the plaintiffs allege. He's only saying that whatever AT&T is doing is a state secret.

No pete. What he said is that At&T's customers have no idea what was done and no way to find out. In short, there is nothing to prosecute. That's not admitting anything at all.

First, DHS released the "essential body of knowledge", which is a standard of practice for assuring the integrity, confidentiality and availability of information resources. It's a how-to guide, and bears close resemblance to existing standards (ISO 27001-2, for example). See: http://www.us-cert.gov/ITSecurityEBK/EBK2007.pdf

Later, the president makes amendments to the 2008 budget, which zeros out unused balances for the Coast Guard, FEMA, Katrina reconstruction, and (most disturbingly) the DHS Inspector General. The savings are specifically earmarked for "preventing cyberattacks". The budget documents reference the participation of the NSA, and suggest that "security monitoring" in "all levels of government" and in the private sector are in scope. 1000-2000 new employees to support the effort. Story first seen in a Baltimore Sun piece by Siobhan Gorman:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.nsa20sep20,0,5183239,full.story

Budget amendments on whitehouse.gov:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/amendments/amendment_11_6_07.pdf

Then a letter from Rep Bennie Thompson (House Homeland Security Comm Chair) to Chertoff, expressing unease at the suggestion that the NSA would be handling security monitoring data and wanting to know what's going on. (I have the PDF, but can't find a link to the letter anywhere - I got it from an information security professional organization.) This was right about the time they were talking about the use of satellites for domestic surveillance - a brouhaha that seemed to come and go very quickly.

Where does all this converge?

By giving us all an unenforceable standard to meet, without resources to implement, the EBK is dead on arrival. However, it creates the perception that there is a public-private partnership coming to work on cybersecurity for critical infrastructure. Using that head-fake, "security monitoring" goes in place and packets everywhere are tunneled back to the NSA for analysis. Security monitoring = surveillance. Same thing. This is, in my opinion, a lefthanded way of legalizing and expanding the packet-scarfing that's been going on all this time, so that AT&T (et al.) won't suffer the brand damage and customer flight that took place 2 weeks ago when it was made apparent how they rolled over.

No longer domestic surveillance. Security monitoring to prevent cyberattacks. Brilliant.

Nothing new there of course to anyone who's been following this. This is not a criticism of you, Air America or your fellow panelists and Seder, but an observation that the number of people who appear to be aware of and care about this and other important issues seems to have reached some maximal but still insufficiently large size to do actual good for the moment and we're all basically preaching to ourselves.

But unless and until awareness of and outrage over these issues expands beyond our relatively small numbers into the wider public, and reaches some sort of politically critical size (of the sort that was sufficient to kick the GOP out of congress last year but which seems to not yet be capable of doing much else), alleged Dems like Reid will be able to keep on pulling this crap and get away with it, and this will keep on happening. And yes, most people do appear to view this as so much paranoid conspiracy theorizing.

So to me, the challenge right now is less to keep on arguing what horrible things congress is doing, and more to rally the wider public to see and get outraged over this, in ways that might actually convince congress to change its ways. We all know what horrible, un-American and dangerous policies these are. The question is how we get the rest of the country to realize this and do something about it? Because if we can't do that, then what does this all matter?

And right now, beyond the expected remark here and there about how stupid Bush is and how useless he and both parties are, I see little to no genuine concern, or intention to try to do anything about it, among my non-blogging friends and family. The disconnect between all the bad stuff that is happening today, and the awareness of and concern over it that the wider public expresses, is striking, and quite scary.

It's almost like a national version of the famous Kitty Genovese rape (in which dozens of people heard a young woman being raped and murdered in NYC in the early 60's, and no one did a thing about it), except that in the present case, most people aren't even aware that a rape (of the constitution and our democracy) is taking place, let alone are concerned over or intend to do anything about it. (And politicians--many of them our own Dems--know this, and are exploiting it cynically in order to advance their and their donors' self-interested agendas.)

Atrocious governance of this sort can only take place when the public is either unaware of it, unconcerned about it, or too fearful and/or discouraged to try to do anything about it. I wish I knew how to change this, but I simply don't. I try to talk to people I know about it, but over and over and over I get the same mixture of annoyance, boredom, and that look people give you when they think that you're crazy. And yes, most people do appear to view this as so much paranoid conspiracy theorizing. They view Bush & Co. as corrupt, dishonest and incompetent, but are not yet willing or able to view them as inherently tyrannical and dangerous, as we do.

And it is precisely such ignorance, apathy and denial that Bush, the GOP, and these complicit and/or cowardly Dems, are counting on to get their way. And so far, they've been able to rely upon it consistently. I have no idea how to change that. And, I suspect, it won't change until things get even worse, and these actions end up demonstrably hurting vastly more Americans than they already have, or finally be seen as capable of hurting them. But we're not there yet.

I will call my senators and congressman, along with the congressional candidates for president and Reid and Durbin's office. But I don't really expect it to do much good, honestly.