-Caveat Lector-
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Birthing The Ogpu
Chronicles Of The Galloping
Sovietization
Home Columns
It's going fast now. Not just the searches and growing federalization
of law enforcement, but now the military as secret police. It's getting
dark out there. I'm going to burrow into Tahiti with a brown maiden,
change my name to Oogawaga, and hope they overlook me.
In Chicago on the flight to Guadalajara I was as usual detail searched
by domestic aboriginals. They say searches are random, but they are
lying. They would be random if mediated by a random-number
generator, which they aren't. Somebody chooses who to harass. If
you have a beard and a cowboy hat, or wear a Harley shirt, they'll
randomly select you at least once per trip. I promise.
Which has nothing to do with security. They are searching people of
whose appearance they disapprove. Priss cops.
I had my scuba gear in a shoulder bag. Our highly trained security
mechanics pawed at it like monkeys who had found a fruit basket.
Great. Kink the hose near a connection and I suddenly don't have air
at 130 feet. One of these frauds pulled out my dive computer. He
looked as if he wasn't sure whether to inspect it or peel it.
"What is this?" he asked.
"A coconut," I didn't say, or I would still be in jail. I did say, "A dive
computer."
He looked at it without comprehension, then asked me again what it
was. Presumably he suspected that it might have turned into
something else in the intervening two seconds. It's how dive
computers are. One minute a computer, the next minute a rainbow-
colored unicorn.
Brainless thoroughness complemented thorough brainlessness.
They pulled everything out, knowing what none of it was, and stuffed
it back in, having accomplished nothing. The exercise was pointless.
I had two dive lights containing twelve C-cells. They could have been
carefully sealed Semtex. The dive computer could have been full of
C4.
And the airlines wonder why people fly less.
Tell you what. I'm going to call Homeland Security in an Arabic accent
and say, "We sending suicide bomber, he haff explosive prostate.
Heeheehee!" Then I'll buy railroad stocks.
Anyway, to continue the grisly chronicles of unwanted security:
Having reached Guad, I was chowing down on really great ribs at
Bruno's when a buddy handed me a printout from the Washington
Times. First sentence: "Language tucked inside the Homeland
Security bill will allow the federal government to track the e-mail,
Internet use, travel, credit-card purchases, phone and bank records
of foreigners and U.S. citizen in its hunt for terrorists."
Bingo. I told you it would happen, but I thought it would be slower-a
gradual linking of DMV records state to state, police records
becoming electronically available, and so on. Nope. We're going for
the whole totalitarian enchilada at once. Yes indeedy. The Mommy
State is going to watch us very carefully. For our own good.
Better yet, the Defense Department is going to run the Total
Information Awareness program. (I didn't make that name up. I
couldn't. TIA in Spanish means "aunt," which fits. Aunty will keep an
eye on us.) Yep. The military is going to be another federal police
force. You want to be watched, don't you? It's so we won't be
terrorists.
Says the Times "Computers and analysts are supposed to use all this
available information to determine patterns of people's behavior to
detect and identify terrorists…."
Patterns of behavior. Data mining. If you have lunch three times at
Kabob Bazaar, and charge ammunition at the shooting range where
you take your daughter plinking, and read a book on torpedo design
because you like military history-the computers will kick your name
out, and the feds will show up to ransack your life.
I'd rather have the terrorists.
Note the attempt to sneak this cybernetic Stalinism surreptitiously
into law. Legalizing unlimited surveillance of everybody is not trivial.
If a worse law has been passed, I am unaware of it. You don't try to
make massive changes in the tenor of society without mentioning it
to the society. The White House knows this.
But that is exactly the scam being worked. It is underhanded,
deliberately deceptive, far more dangerous to the country than
Moslem terrorists. It is the product of minds that have no idea of how
America is supposed to work.
If you think Aunty is going to be used only to fail to catch terrorists,
you are kidding yourself. Knowledge is power. It gets used. I'm from
Washington. I know. For example, the congressman who decides not
to run again because his political enemies have discovered his taste
for little boys. It happens.
Who of us doesn't have some skeleton moldering in the crawlway?
Do you want your wife to know about the time at the Watermelon
Growers convention when you ended up in the sack with that gal
who, though married, wasn't married to you? You probably aren't
going to make waves, are you?
Once the barrier is breached between governmental and private
records, surveillance will grow like kudzu-so that we will be safe. If
the government can have access to all existing records to protect us,
it will shortly want to create new ones to protect us. At Fort Meade in
Maryland broods the National Security Agency, which is not
supposed to, and may not, spy domestically. It has phenomenal
capacity for intercepting, decrypting, collating, storing. Just the thing
for prospecting for terrorists, don't you think? You can bet the
Homeland Security people have thought.
Fear not, though. These same Homeland Security people have said
that, why no, they would never, ever, do anything wrong, and they
even have a Privacy Officer to make sure. What could be more
reassuring? Building a system to spy on Americans, the government
assures us that it won't use it to spy on Americans, and to protect us
against the possibility, the government will provide a Privacy Officer
who works…for the government.
I never thought I could possibly Clinton back. The man was a
detestable, lying, libidinous psychopath who did chunky interns,
looted the White House, and sold pardons like an escapee from
Chaucer-but he begins to look like a mere amiable clown. Bush
means business.
If you are ever in Papeete, ask for Oogawaga.
©Fred Reed 2002
Nekkid In Austin!
Buy Fred's new reprehensible book, Nekkid In Austin!
Barnes and Noble has the sucker. Another collection of
Fred's collected outrages, irresponsible ravings, and
curmudgeonry from Fred On Everything and some
innocent magazines that foolishly published him. Put
Fred Reed in the search at thingy at B&N and the book
will pop like mushrooms on a decaying stump. On
request, they may ship it in a plain brown wrapper
marked "Sex Books" so your neighbors won't suspect.
Subscribe! Fred's Other Book!ColumnsDonate
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since the War between the States. The GOP is the party
of conscription, the income tax, the loyalty oath, fiat
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it is that Democrats were so much worse.
~~L. Neil Smith
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