Yes, your statements are hypotheticals when you tack the word "suppose" onto a brief description of one of your friends and then describe civil rights violations that have not occurred. And the fact that you can poke tons of holes in my Ben and Scotty hypo is because it is an unlikely event, but in my mind, it's about as likely as the world where a Russia-US "pissing contest" sends innocent citizens away at the airport because of "crimes" their RELATIVE didn't even get a trial for. It's also about as likely as an entire family getting "vanned" just for their nationality and e-mails that are clearly not threatening to anyone who takes the three seconds to read them.
Once more with feeling: Ekaterina hasn't had these problems because she has actively chosen to disobey her employer. You think people can get onto planes no problem? The guy who directed Donnie Darko got turned away from a flight to Cannes because he has the same name as a suspected terrorist. Assam is not running into trouble because I'm keeping him out of it. Remember - he's already on the no-fly list. He hasn't seen his family in fifteen years. His dad died last year and Assam didn't even get to attend the funeral. I don't give a shit about "your mind" because in your Town Called Perfect Scotty the Spook is an altruistic busybody who is only performing blanket searches on everyone so that he can help save kids from turning a web search into Columbine. "Your mind" presumes that information will only ever be used for good, and discounts the fact that the consequences of it being used for evil are absolute. I suspect you don't know any immigrants. Allow me to let you in on a little secret: America is much easier if you're a white citizen. And while I know you will continue to live in your "it can't happen here" bubble, allow me to state once more, before I set you to ignore, that it is happening here every day. I have a friend whose band had to cancel their showcase at SXSW because his name is in the TSA list as being an alias for someone who is on the list. He drove for two years, everywhere he needed to go... then he legally changed his name. Now he's the same as every other citizen. There's your ideal surveillance state. Too disconnected to know that a programmer from Seattle isn't a grudge-holding Tamil... and too clueless to care when the formerly-indicted skates because he changed his name. Bye bye.