Don't fear the so-called terrorists, the odds of being the victim of such an attack are so astronomically small as to be irrelevant
Fear the domestic politicians that want you to be afraid, because unlike the terrorists, they are the ones that seem to actually hate your freedom and want to take it away.?
Terrorists are gaining ground, intelligence committee heads say
Washington (CNN) — The leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence committees said Sunday that terrorists have gained ground in the past two years and that the United States is not any safer than it was at the outset of 201…
There's simply not enough blanket surveillance I guess. Or perhaps just not enough censorship.
I think there are plenty of politicians that are actively sowing fear to promote their own agenda, but I think there is also an explanation relying only on incompetence (which is usually a better explanation than malice).
Given that the probability of a particular person being a terrorist is extremely low, even a statistically good test is going to have tons of false positives. Those false positives fool them into thinking they are stopping lots of attacks, and therefore fuel the desire for more draconian measures to prevent terrorism.
http://www.refsmmat.com/statistics/p-value.html#the-base-rate-fallacy-in-medical-testing
"Plenty of politicians"? Try all of 'em.