The politics of surveillance are the politics of fear. As long as the people are afraid of terrorism -- regardless of how realistic their fears are -- they will demand that the government keep them safe. And if the government can convince them that it needs this or that power in order to keep the people safe, the people will willingly grant them those powers. That's Goldsmith's first point.
Today, in the wake of the horrific and devastating Paris terror attacks, we're at a pivotal moment. People are scared, and already Western governments are lining up to authorize more invasive surveillance powers. The US want to back-door encryption products in some vain hope that the bad guys are 1) naive enough to use those products for their own communications instead of more secure ones, and 2) too stupid to use the back doors against the rest of us. The UK is trying to rush the passage oflegislation that legalizes a whole bunch of surveillance activities that GCHQ has already been doing to its own citizens. France just gave its police a bunch of new powers. It doesn't matter that mass surveillance isn't an effective anti-terrorist tool: a scared populace wants to be reassured.
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Terrorism is singularly designed to push our fear buttons in ways completely out of proportion to the actual threat. And as long as people are scared of terrorism, they'll give their governments all sorts of new powers of surveillance, arrest, detention, and so on, regardless of whether those powers actual combat the actual threat. This means that those who want those powers need a steady stream of terrorist attacks to enact their agenda. It's not that these people are actively rooting for the terrorists, but they know a good opportunity when they see it.
We know that the PATRIOT Act was largely written before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and that the political climate was right for its introduction and passage...