Cast of thousands, mostly innocent

In an article that managed to make it on to the front page of the today's New York Times, tucked in among the Eliot Spitzer scandal stories which dominate, we learn that the Pentagon has uncovered fifty videotapes of terrorism suspect interrogations.  At least that's what the headline implies is the major news story:  Pentagon Cites Tapes Showing Interrogations.  The lead paragraph notes that one of the tapes "showed what a military spokeman described as the forced gagging of a terrorism suspect."

Forced gagging?

Anyway, I think the real story is in the fourth paragraph, but it's almost a throwaway line:

The officials said it appeared that only a small fraction of the tens of thousands of interrogations worldwide since 2001 had been recorded.

Tens of thousands of interrogations!  Since the US is holding a only a few hundred suspects, the conclusion I come to is that the headline should have been:

Pentagon Admits to Interrogating Tens of Thousands of Innocent People Since 2001

Forced Gagging Among Tactics Used on the Innocent

The same edition of the Times has another cast-of-thousands story, this one on page 20.

F.B.I. Made 'Blanket' Demands for Phone Records

WASHINGTON — Senior officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation repeatedly approved the use of “blanket” records demands to justify the improper collection of thousands of phone records, according to officials briefed on the practice.  [Full story]

The common argument by those who favor the government's massive appetite for collecting information on innocent citizens is something like, "If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

Not only is that argument dead wrong, it is exactly backwards.  With the government interrogating tens of thousands of innocent people, and collecting the phone and email records of thousands of innocent people, If you haven't done anything wrong, you are exactly the kind of person who should be very worried.