Surveillance and the Sphere of Consensus

In an article for the Guardian, Matthew Harwood links together a number of news items from the last few years which shed light on the nature of "homeland security intelligence" and the development of the surveillance society within the national security state. He writes:

From 2005 to 2006, the Maryland state police, with help from DHS, surveilled non-violent anti-war and anti-death penalty groups and labelled 53 individuals and groups as diverse as the DC Anti-War Network and Amnesty International as terrorists.

[ . . . ]

This month a leaked February bulletin from the Missouri Information Analysis Centre said support for independent presidential candidates like Ron Paul or an affinity for Revolutionary war-era "Don't Tread on Me" flags could mean you're a militia member a la Timothy McVeigh.

And concludes:

If you hold a political opinion outside the conventional two-party system, you're suspect. How paranoid and self-defeating it is when analysts have to wade through mountains of information that smears unorthodox political opinions when real threats to security exist.

What Harwood does not recognize is that, from the perspective of the intelligence and surveillance apparatus of the two-party state, political opinions outside the bipartisan sphere of consensus are clearly perceived as real threats to the security of the system.