On Thursday night, I drove to the gas station and was listening to a show on C-SPAN radio about NSA data gathering phone metadata. A lawyer (not sure who she was) said that it was illegal, and cited that the American Revolution was largely fought over the use of “general warrants” by the British – i.e. fishing expeditions to find evidence of any breach of the law, without probable cause.

A few minutes later I was pulled over by a cop, who told me that one of my tail lights was out. He then made me wait for 10 minutes while he went back to his car and tried to dig up evidence of anything he could charge me with. Eventually he gave up and issued me a warning for the tail light.