ANGELO CODEVILLA: Mindless security doesn’t help:

Angelo Codevilla, a professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, said he expects the Paris attacks to revive the conversation around domestic surveillance — but he doubts the debate will do much good.

“What I expect is there will be more mindless calls for tight security on the general population rather than a focus on the people who are likeliest to do these things — on the people who shout ‘Allahu Akbar’,” he said.

Codevilla’s case in point is France itself, where blanket surveillance and wiretapping is commonplace.

“There is no such thing as privacy of communication in France — I mean no such thing,” he said. “The implication here is we can multiply by an order of magnitude the amount of intrusive surveillance and we will have results no better than what they have in France.”

But blanket surveillance is more politically useful.