You miss the main threat posed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s assuming the power to spy on all of us by physical surveillance, covert infiltration and even trash-picking, all without reasonable grounds for suspicion, much less the constitutional standard of “probable cause.”

The F.B.I. claims merely to want to find information by which it can squeeze citizens to cooperate in federal investigations. But what can possibly be found in the average person’s trash that would make him squeezable? The answer lies in the extraordinarily vague laws that characterize the sprawling federal criminal code.