Sunday, June 16, 2013

Big Politically Correct Brother sees everything... and nothing

Mark Steyn's latest column in National Review is about our simultaneously all-knowing and know-nothing big government.

Some excerpts:

As the IRS scandal reminds us, you have to have a touchingly naïve view of government to believe that the 99.9999 percent of “metadata” entirely irrelevant to terrorism will not be put to some use, sooner or later.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was training in Dagestan, posting terrorist videos on YouTube, and getting fingered by the Russians to the FBI. Who did nothing.

Three hundred million Americans are standing naked in the NSA digital scanner, but the all-seeing security state has agreed that not just their womenfolk but Islam itself can be fully veiled from head to toe.

We’re told that universal surveillance has prevented all kinds of atrocities we can never hear about — an answer straight out of Orwell. Yet oddly, in the ones we do hear about, the perps are hiding in plain sight (Major Hasan with “Soldier of Allah” on his business card), the intelligence services do nothing (the Pantybomber known to the CIA but still permitted to board the plane), and the digital superstate is useless (the Tsarnaev photo rang no bells with the facial-recognition software, but was identified by friends who saw it on TV).

Big Politically Correct Brother sees everything . . . and nothing.

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