Healthy systems exist in multiple-layered robust feedback systems. Short answer: we're the same people just as afraid as we've always been, but we've dismantled or disabled several different feedback systems. We kept mucking with a complex system until we broke it.

This news is a horrible thing, and I'm outraged. It needs to be fixed. Right now. Having said that, it's good to have a little bit of historical context. Every governmental structure we've set up, from the military to a national police force, has pushed the limits to see how far they can go.

You think you'd set up these agencies with clear missions and they would stay inside the coloring book and mind their knitting, but that's not how it actually plays out. Instead, egotistical, ambitious people get in charge and want to do something even more impressive than the last guy. That means pushing things. IIRC, one of the first uses of a telephone tap was made by law enforcement. The intelligence community got so far out of whack that by the 70s it took a major reform to try to un-screw them. A lot of that work we dismantled after 9-11.

Here's another way of saying the same thing: it used to be that when extreme things happened the people we elect and the government we've created took drastic, emergency and probably extra-constitutional action to react. You can go back as far as Jefferson (or before) and the Louisiana Purchase and see people we put in charge kind of making it up as they went along.

This actually worked well because if there was a mistake? Well, we were doing it the wrong way to begin with. Elect new people, clean up the agency, say a bunch of apologies and write checks, and don't do that again --- at least in the same way.

Now, however, we want to create systems of things. Whereas it used to be that if they thought there was a bomb on a plane they might forceably unload it and strip-search everybody there, now we just hired tens of thousands of people and treat everybody that flies like a potential terrorist. Problem solved. No more worrying about those one-of incidents. No more people getting fired, agencies looking bad, or any of those huge cleanups.

After the 93 World Trade Center bombings, the United States Secret Service wanted to put anti-aircraft missiles on the White House. They were laughed out of the room. Who knows, they might have put some up anyway and nobody ever found out. After 9-11 that changed. Now it's a system. They wanted to shut down Pa Avenue, also laughed out of the room. They got it. They regularly ruin cell service, and are monitoring all calls in the area. Now they're bulk-buying privacy data and asking for even more permissions. These aren't "Hey, we're worried that something might happen, so let's try this for a while even if it's wrong" These are "We want permission to do this from this point on out and you leave us the hell alone" I don't mean to pick on them. Everybody's getting in on the action.

I could continue the rant, but as you see, this isn't a case of people changing or agencies changing in the last 20 years or so. This is a case of continuing to tinker with a system over 230+ years until you broke it. I wish it were just as easy as blaming the Border Patrol. It is not.