They just hated and feared us because our government hated and feared them. - Cory Doctorow

"Funny, for all surveillance, Osama bin Laden is still free—and we're not. Guess who's winning the "war on terror?

"The Bill of Rights was written before data-mining," he said. He was awesomely serene, convinced of his rightness. "The right to freedom of association is fine, but why shouldn't the cops be allowed to mine your social network to figure out if you're hanging out with gangbangers and terrorists?"

I'd never really believed in terrorists before — I mean, I knew that in the abstract there were terrorists somewhere in the world, but they didn't really represent any risk to me. There were millions of ways that the world could kill me — starting with getting run down by a drunk burning his way down Valencia — that were infinitely more likely and immediate than terrorists. Terrorists kill a lot fewer people than bathroom falls and accidental electrocutions. Worrying about them always struck me as about as useful as worrying about getting hit by lightning.