Let's cut to the chase: If Big Brother wants you, he's got you, telephone metadata notwithstanding. This disconcerting fact of modern life has been true more or less since the invention of the camera, the microphone and the tape recorder.When J. Edgar Hoover's FBI wanted to dig the dirt on Martin Luther King, they bugged his hotel rooms and infiltrated his inner circle with hired betrayers. Once the target was chosen, technological wizardry was secondary.I am moved to these observations by the fact the Republican National Committee has now joined the left in pretending to be outraged by something they manifestly do not fear.The same GOP that rationalized torture and cheered the Bush administration's use of warrantless wiretaps as recently as 2006 now denounces the National Security Agency's "Section 215" bulk collection of telephone data as "an invasion into the personal lives of American citizens that violates the right of free speech and association afforded by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution."Oh, and the Fourth Amendment, too.