Yes I would. The tone of your question unsubtly implies that you thought you'd catch me in an inconsistency, but no luck: Aggressive surveillance of Americans was no more acceptable when J. Edgar Hoover did it using flesh-and-blood G-Men than it is now using computers.

The fact that the computers can drink from the Internet firehose at a level far beyond the capabilities of flesh-and-blood G-Men certainly makes it a whole lot worse.

How far off do you think we are from realization of the Big Brother State, Tom?

Today it's already cameras in every public place and almost all workplaces, keystroke and email and Web surfing monitoring at work, ubiquitous monitoring of the Internet and our phone calls, government agencies linking their databases to ensure that no bit goes unturned, and government in turn linking to the databases of private industry...are we there yet, Tom?

And if you don't think we're there yet or getting close, just how would you define the Big Brother State? Methinks you're remarkably forgiving of government surveillance for a die-hard Libertarian. Are you sure you're really a Libertarian?

Speaking of inconsistencies as we were...