Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

"Normal" behavior doesn't include jumping off a bridge. But I and friends have, as a lark. Is that then suspicious? Or from the article, normal people don't buy explosive chemicals and a timer in the same week ... except if the person's teen wants the chemicals for a science experiment and the timer replaces the broken one for the lawn irrigation system.

There are a huge number of these low-probability events, and it overwhelms the signal of any truly suspicions behavior. Should the authorities investigate all of these? Some of these? What sets the limit? The lack of funding or the law?

"Authoritarianism" comes into play because the authorities do come in and investigate. That's their mandate. And innocent citizens are compelled to submit to the investigation, or at the least get the clear signal that the government thinks they are suspicious. Some will stop doing legal things (like traveling by air) in order to not be subject to increased scrutiny by the authorities. This might be low-level authoritarianism, but it still is a higher level of submission to authority than I would like.

There's always going to be some false positives, where innocent citizens are investigated, accused, and even put into prison, so it's not like I'm saying that we can have a non-authoritarian government. But do say that this has nothing to do with authoritarianism is only focusing on the collection of the data, and not the likelihood that someone in authority will do something with it.

You know what annoys me? How many tax dollars are spent on a full body scanner, when the airport bar right on the other side is full of breakable glass. Nevermind the tests that showed that a knife, gun, or even high explosive could be snuck through the checkpoint; a determined attacker could just make their weapons after passing through security. This is not to mention the large, densely-packed crowd of people waiting to go through the checkpoint, a prime target for terrorists.

"If this was the 12th of September 2001 would your opinion be different and if so, why?"

People were talking about terrorists making their weapons after passing through airport security in 2001. People were talking about the crowd of people waiting to pass through security being a target. People were talking about the corruption, the friendly contracts that pour tax money into well-connected companies' coffers, in 2001.

The law is out-of-date. When the law was written, constructing a dossier on a person required effort -- officers in the field, following the target around, interviewing people, etc. Today, the dossier can be rapidly assembled, assuming it has not been already by some private company that "specializes" in constructing such things.

We need an update to the law, to protect our rights from government use of new technologies.

"Phone records. Addresses. Aliases. Friends. Fingerprints. Is it wrong that they want to put in all in place? Would we be happier if they had to run around to 25 different government agencies / 25 private corporations to get the information?"

Yes, I would be happier if the bureaucracy slowed the police down, as a basic protection against tyranny. We have far too many laws, and far too many prisoners -- anything that slows the expansion of our prison population and renders absurd laws unenforceable should be welcomed. Do you really think that these databases will be used solely to catch murderers and rapists? Most of people targeted by these sorts of programs will be nonviolent, non-dangerous offenders who will be charged with dozens of crimes and told to either take a plea bargain or risk a longer sentence if they exercise their right to a trial (and if even a tenth of them were to demand a trial, our court system would be overwhelmed by the case load -- yes, that is how extreme things have gotten).

"I'd like to know I have the freedom to do the same thing"

You do not. Go ahead, try to go around your town collecting these sorts of details -- you'll be arrested for harassing people, being a public nuisance, resisting arrest, and probably multiple other crimes.

"Should individuals have the power to control what others do with the information that is publically knowable about them?"

We are not talking about any other random people, we are talking about the police. The police are a special class of people. We let them arrest people, holding people against their will at gunpoint. We do this because some people pose a danger to society, but we must be careful with just how much power the police have, in both firepower, information collection, and budget (currently, the police can recycle the proceeds from certain kinds of arrest back into their budgets; unsurprisingly, such arrests are more common than any other, and our prisons are filled with people who were targeted for such arrests).