US watches Canadian travellers in Canada

Start with a news story at http://tinyurl.com/5xw3b:

Uncle Sam's steely glare
Since 9/11, U.S. and other foreign security agencies have had access to private details of Canadians. With the help of the federal government, the U.S. appears able to track Canadians wherever they travel.

I feel outraged that folks in their own country are getting abused because of some MOU (and as an emergency services volunteer, I have a nodding acquaintance with their proliferation nowadays).

Then, I watch DIRTY WAR, and wonder if turning the Useful Idiots of government loose, with a list of folks who might be part of a CBRN threat, isn't such a bad idea, considering how easy it is to smuggle nuclear materials and just how broke the nuclear workers of the former Soviet Union (not just Russia) are.

All it would take would be one anomic "nuke" (US Navy slang expression for nuclear worker) or "glowworm" (emergency services equivalent term) to get royally mad about his family's poor living conditions, crapticular health care or his loss of social staus since the Glory Days of the Evil Empire ended.

Evgeny goes nutter and smuggles out a canister of Cs-137, or worse, past a drunken, passed out security guard, and sells it to his mate Abood, who knows a guy who knows a guy....

A month later, there's a chain link fence around downtown Portland, and no one can go back there for decades, not to mention hundreds to thousands of people who are now walking dead, waiting weeks-months-years to die.

Is personal surveillance, if implemented intelligently with oversight and better checks and balances, rational? Or shall we let a thousand Chernobyls bloom for the sake of our civil liberties? How long will the lumpenproletariat give a hoot about those civil iberties after Fenway Park gets 'dusted'?

The thought scared me when I first read SOLUTION UNSATISFACTORY, and it still does. But, since we seem to be living in IF THIS GOES ON, other things worry me, too.

Footnote: But, then Canada's Useful Idiots are adequately equipped to harass their own citizens without our interference, so I feel better now.