From the opening paragaph of today’s AP story:

In more than six years of spying on Muslim neighborhoods, eavesdropping on conversations and cataloguing mosques, the New York Police Department’s secret Demographics Unit never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation, the department acknowledged in court testimony unsealed late Monday.

Useless and pernicious dragnet surveillance on whole populations is the hallmark of authoritarian/totalitarian regimes…or, in this case, of a major city police department that made the mistake of hiring ex-CIA operatives.