Fear-driven legislative momentum expands government surveillance with little public opposition

Evidence

In an atmosphere of heightened public fear, Congress quickly enacted and the president signed the Patriot Act, which was designed to intercept and disrupt terrorism. Its later reauthorization expanded the government’s investigative power. … The chief of staff to the former director of the CIA justified the massive scope of the surveillance program metaphorically: “If you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, you need a haystack” (Schmitt et al., 2013). Edward Snowden, a staffer at a National Security Agency contractor, expressed shock at the immense surveillance and released secret documents about the program to the press (Greenwald, MacAskill, & Poitras, 2013). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2333

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth probing whether the ‘needle in a haystack, you need a haystack’ metaphor shows an advantage framing or a different disengagement mechanism (expanding target definition) operating on surveillance itself.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2333
• XREF: connects to: Demonstration frequency tracks and helps drive expansion of civil liberties — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1201