&gt; It&#x27;s almost as though preventing terrorism isn&#x27;t the main focus of these totalitarian programs or something.<p>I suspect that the main focus is preventing as much terrorism as operational constraints permit.  Some of the people fingered as &quot;possible terrorists&quot; are not terrorists at all; maybe their friend or their brother is trying to recruit them, so they show up as a possible.  How much are you willing to infringe on those peoples&#x27; lives in order to prevent terrorist attacks?  How much of that will society put up with?<p>The problem is that you often don&#x27;t know someone is a terrorist until they actually do something.  You may suspect, but you don&#x27;t <i>know</i>.  But you also suspect 10 times as many people who never do anything (&quot;10&quot; being a made-up number, but I&#x27;m pretty sure it&#x27;s more than 2).  What&#x27;s your threshold for cracking down?  How many innocent people do you jail to prevent 130 innocent people from being killed?