another reason to panic

one thing about a national-security/surveillance state that is obsessed with terrorism: anyone could shut the sucker down at any moment. (notice that i am describing, not advocating this. i don't see what constructive purpose would be served and it's wrong to cause people hassles unless you've got a good reason.) here are two  examples. (honestly, growing up as a baby revlutionary in dc, it did occur to me to wonder whether you could fly a model plane onto the white house grounds.) but really, anybody with a twitter handle can scramble the airforce or disrupt air traffic all over the country or world. a few backpacks would be enough to shut down a major city. there is a panicky, pussy-like, hysterical quality to our anti-terror efforts that is itself a vulnerabilty. procedures like this require a lot less expertise than hacking the power grid or something. any teenager is aware that he can shut down his school with a phone call if the need arises - the thing is fairly routine in any given county - and it generalizes to any situation where you have a lot of people and prickly, testicularly challenged authorities who watch them all day. right now, not to put too fine a point on it, you could stop paris without committing a crime, using only a parked rental truck, a funky outfit, and an ambiguous phrase. (i say that in my capacity as a security consultant, to help governments identify emerging threats.) everybody's focused on not making the fatal mistake, which is a fatal mistake.