Re: Intelligent services.
You've pretty much covered the situation. I hope it gets better. I think it's starting to. Remember, we rarely hear about the successes, i.e. terrorist plots that have been foiled.
If you want to walk a mile in the moccasins of one who is fed up with a bloated government, take your assessment of our security bureaucracy and multiply it by the hundreds of other Federal bureaucracies that make life-altering decisions on your behalf every day. At least most of their mistakes don't kill anyone. Well, maybe except for the FDA.