The Government Needs Your Panic

Through everything I have read in the past week I have learned that the governments of the US, the UK, Canada and probably all the others have known about the possible use by terrorists of liquid explosives on airplanes for many years.  Why then did they suddenly rush to put in place new restrictions overnight?  It is obvious that the alleged British plot could have been disrupted well in advance had the new rules been in place months or years earlier.

The only explanation that makes sense is that governments need to instil a sense of immediate panic.  By creating such a sense of emergency they are able to impose "security" regimes far in excess of those required to deal with the immediate situation;  ongoing mass surveillance of private citizens being the prime example, as Chertoff called for this week.

Without a doom-laden sense of fear, do we really believe that most people would accept government agents trolling through our bank accounts, our phone records and our email transcripts on a daily basis?  No.  They need the depth of fear created by these emergency announcements, not to deal with particular terrorist threats, but to extend and expand their control of our daily lives;  an expansion we would never otherwise accept.