Snooping on Everyone While the Big Box Thieves Get Busy

[unhappycamper]

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/26630-snooping-on-everyone-while-the-big-box-thieves-get-busy

Snooping on Everyone While the Big Box Thieves Get Busy
By Emily Schwartz Greco and William A. Collins, OtherWords | Op-Ed
Saturday, 04 October 2014 13:36

In a more innocent time not so long ago, perhaps only a million or so people in this country fell under the government's suspecting glare. Achieving that distinctively fat FBI file might have required marching against a war or traveling to leftist lands.

These days, there's no precise way to figure out what it takes. And once you get on that dreaded terror watch list, there's no certain route to getting off it and flying without fear of having to spend some serious quality time with a pack of TSA goons.

Just ask Stephen Hayes. The conservative journalist and frequent Fox News guest is trying his best to get off that list. He doesn't know how he got on it exactly, but he suspects it has something to do with a trip he and his wife took that involved flying with one-way tickets to Turkey and then carrying on their overseas adventure by land and sea.

Being a staunch conservative, this puts Hayes in the awkward position of potentially sympathizing with innocent people trying to travel while Muslim. Still, he does manage to weave his predicament into his usual narrative by pinning the blame for this spooky nonsense on the Department of Homeland Security's "large, lumbering, inefficient bureaucracy."