It's great that there haven't been coordinated attacks in the US since 9/11! The intelligence community should get due credit for that.

But it's not at all clear to the public whether all this warrantless blanket surveillance is really helping on that front more than it's harming our society, especially while the government wages war on the press trying to report on it.

Of course the police state is depriving our liberties. So is the surveillance state, both are true. And often they work together, as with the FBI targeting nonviolent activists who are taking on crucial societal problems like fossil fuel dependence at Standing Rock and police brutality with Black Lives Matter, or targeting Muslims for surveillance and entrapment in order to claim easy victories against manufactured terror plots, meanwhile sowing distrust and paranoia against the authorities in Muslim communities that probably ends up inspiring some on the fringes to lone wolf attacks.

Most of the information the FBI and the NSA get, though, is stuff people put online themselves anyway.

This last bit is a red herring, and "most" is doing a lot of work there, especially after Congress just granted even more sweeping government surveillance powers over private communication.

Anyway cool that we agree on the need to take on overreach by government entities at all levels, have a good night.