as I've noted here as well, all the Snowden stuff is irrelevant and just a distraction from the issues that matter and should be discussed.
Your first question I'd respond with the ability to investigate and track actual suspects. The last two I think are related. The reasons why are many and varied, but if they have a common denominator, at least in the short term, I'd say it's the fear on the part of the monied interests running this country in the looming social unrest coming from the right and left for different reasons -- a perfect storm of sorts. And in the longer term/decades to come, there is likely gonna be non-ideological causes due to global warming, once food and fresh water shortages create conflicts here and abroad.
The subject we've broached about control without the need for blatant punishment as the motivator, won't last when things like hardship and survival on the scale I think we'll inevitably be seeing are added to the mix. Call me silly, but I think compliance will melt away like the arctic sea ice will soon begin to, in its entirety. It can only forestall the chaos they are hoping this will help manage. They may be a little off timewise with their predictions http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver, but I think this is just part of the preparatory work/foundation for harsher means of control that will be required in the future.
I've long seen the "war on terror" as little more than pretext to hide a lotta things they'd like to keep secret and the populace ignorant about. It's unfathomable to me that it still gets more notice, time, and investments than something like AGW that dwarfs it threatwise, and partcularly given that the cost of ending most of the terrorism threat is simply to mind our own business, and to abandon the empire we can't afford.
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