This is an admittedly vain repost of a reply I posted in
this thread. I thought it might be worth a read, even to folks not looking at that thread.

The situation is this. A traveler has been detained at an airport by TSA agents. While interrogating him, the authorities demand to know about his affiliation with, or knowledge of, any terrorist organizations.  A possible response follows.

I am at this time cooperating with a paramilitary organization whose members use unspoken but blatant threats of force and isolation from friends, family and loved ones to coerce private citizens to surrender statutory and constitutional rights of political dissent and criticism of the organization and its allies. These same threats are used to intimidate citizens into modifying their modes of dress and comportment to conform to the wishes of the organization, and even to refrain from attempts at humor and discussion of current events which the organization or its members find distasteful. The goal of the organization is to undermine the United States by conditioning its citizens to ignore their rights and give unquestioning obedience to any person claiming to exercise the authority of the Collective. This is done in order to prepare for the eventual rise and dominance in America of the Collective, a new and alien power whose first principle is that power flows if at all from the Collective to the individual, and whose second principle is that the value of the individual consists entirely of his utility to the Collective. Each member of the organization with which I am presently cooperating is sworn to serve and promote the Collective.

The members of the organization wear distinctive paramilitary clothing and appear openly in public, but take measures to ensure that no member of the public with whom they interact is able to obtain any meaningful details about the individuals. Their full names, their addresses, and their comings and goings are concealed from the public, yet they have and use the means to obtain painfully detailed information about any person on whom they fix their attention. Coordinating its operations with other paramilitary organizations, the organization with which I am presently cooperating compiles and maintains secret lists of citizens whom these entities conspire to exclude from certain aspects of public life which are usually presumed to be open to all. No one is permitted to know whether his name is on a list, or the criteria by which persons are selected for inclusion in the lists.

The organization has managed to obtain the full cooperation of officials at the highest reaches of the local, state, and federal governments. Their influence with the judiciary is so strong and so pervasive that no member of the organization can be held liable for anything that he does on behalf of the organization. Even if a member of the organization strikes a citizen, or falsely imprisons him, or deliberately detains or delays him so that the citizen suffers enormous financial or emotional loss, no judge in any court will permit the citizen to bring suit against the operative.

This organization and its members have the use of funds totalling hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Through connections in the military and in law enforcement, they are able to make use of practically any database which is controlled by government at any level; when they use these databases to assist in compelling the cooperation or conformity of citizens, they refuse to explain or acknowledge the source of their information. They have sufficient access to and control of certain governmental and quasigovernmental installations that they have and use the capacity to identify and target a citizen in a crowd of people, quickly and quietly detach him from the crowd, and cause him to disappear. Such a citizen's fate and whereabouts are absolutely unknown to anyone but the organization and its allies until such time as some element of this loose syndicate elects to disclose that information. It is not uncommon for such an operation to cause a citizen to disappear from one public place and appear hours or days later in another public place or even a government facility, with little or no explanation of events.

This organization operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It has facilities and operatives in every American city of any notable size.

There are dozens of members of this organization present in this airport right now.

There are four of them in this room.

I swear that's all I know.

You need to get more rest.

You're Jack Bauer!!!!

An egomaniacal bump for the afternoon and evening crew.