I have a lot of sympathy for the FBI and the CIA. It seems to me that law enforcement generally is a difficult, murky and often messy business at best. Trying to do it on the federal or international scale must be extremely difficult. The Good Guys are bound by all sorts of regulations and expectations which are of no concern to the bad guys...not to mention the constant scrutiny of a skeptical and ocassionally hostile press.

We're all familiar with the ancient Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." We most certainly do, and chances are good that things could get much more interesting before they get any better. From the article ebnelson posted, we've got the chairman of the House subcommittee on national security saying he "wouldn't be the least surprised if there were a nuclear explosion in Israel or the United States."

Putting naive restrictions on the people whose job is to keep us safe seems, in times like these, a pointlessly dangerous path.

my 2 cents, which is probably about what it's worth :-)