[hga]

Note, I'm not an advocate for our current "you have no privacy to speak of" regime. On the other hand, short of our government going Godwin (in which case the remedies aren't to be found here), the American people aren't going to agree to fixes that preclude this sort of investigation.

Anyway, a point I'm making is that law enforcement officers might cast a wide net, but they really want to find the right fish. If for no other reason than that they then have to prove it all in court. The screw case it sounds like you're concerned with is the "find the person, then find a crime" type. If I'm wrong, could you sketch out an abusive scenario?

[nkrumm]

I agree, of course law enforcement wants to find the right fish. Short of a few bad apples (more food analogies!), I don't think that their intentions are malicious (i.e., find a person then find a crime). Instead, I'm concerned about a situation where pressure exists to "find the person" (think Boston Marathon bombing)-- and then shortcuts are taken. Granted, this can happen in a world w/o excessive surveillance also, but its far easier to find a fitting suspect when 100k people are in your net. Those suspects-- ideally-- would be crossed off the list asap, but not before significant harm could be done. Thanks for the interesting discussion!

[hga]

You haven't sketched out a scenario were particularly bad things happen. Yeah, getting arrested and subject to an abusive dwelling search are bad, and due to the poor arms handling of police potentially more than significant harm, but, again, presumably the police would find no evidence to back it up and move to the next set of suspects.

A better example would be the FBI's "investigation" of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks. Neither of the suspects they harassed within an inch of their lives and beyond for the second were guilty, although I think the remedy there is to abolish such politicized "law enforcement" agencies. Whatever their tool set it, they'll abuse it and innocent citizens.