course, they know all the books you've ever bought using credit cards.

Fear, loathing, hysteria, and a loosening of the rules for "national security":

* "Above the Law", by David Burnham, ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996
*
* After the Oklahoma City bombing, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick
* and FBI Director Freeh announced that they had decided to reinterpret
* twenty-year-old Justice Department guidelines originally put in place to
* restrain the FBI from violating the constitutional rights of political
* dissidents.
*
* "If those guidelines are interpreted broadly and proactively, as opposed
* to defensively, as has been the case for many many years, I feel confident
* ...we have sufficient authority," Freeh told a Senate Committee.
*
* William Safire, the conservative New York Times columnist with libertarian
* leanings, was appalled, asking if there wasn't anyone in the government
* who remembered how the FBI played the game in the bad old days?
*
* "To the applause of voters fearful of terrorism," Safire wrote, "th