TAPPED is right to worry about civil liberties. I stand by my prediction from September 14th, which the new Homeland Security reorganization seems to be vindicating:

I have no doubt, even as I write this, that longstanding bureaucratic wish lists are being transformed into “essential” anti-terrorist precautions. I also have no doubt that most of them won’t do any more good than the dumb “are you a terrorist?” questions immigration officials have been asking embarking passengers for years. . . .

“Increased security measures” don’t stop terrorists, except for the occasional bumbling amateur. To put it bluntly, bullets stop terrorists. Terrorists do what they do because it works: it spreads terror, it inconveniences and disrupts societies, and it leads to the adoption of cumbersome security measures that increase the inconvenience and disruption and burden law enforcement and antiterrorist forces with so many pointless tasks that they’re actually less effective against future terrorism. If terrorism doesn’t work, if the consequences are serious and the payoffs small, then terrorism will stop.

Despite the wish lists of bureaucrats, let’s remember who the real enemy is. And let’s take the war to him, not to the American people.

This said, I think that those who have cried wolf over unimportant issues (like the allegedly-dreadful conditions at the Club Med-like Guantanamo Bay prison camp) have done a lot of harm, by making it harder for those who point out real problems to be taken seriously.