Most of us know at least one real “computer person,” the guy who has drivers and filters and who-knows-what on his PC, or the girl who’s constantly downloading and programming and actually knows what her computer does.
These are the people who make sure their social security number isn’t posted on a million message boards, their bank account isn’t some teenager’s homepage and their underwear size isn’t public knowledge.
The time has come to find these people and ask them to teach you everything they know.
Saturday’s New York Times contained an article, which was more than slightly unsettling, describing our government’s latest “weapon” in the war on terrorism. The Pentagon now is developing a highly complex computer system that essentially will spy on people’s computer records worldwide.
This technology, according to statements from government officials overseeing its development, will be capable of recording information from electronic financial transactions, e-mail, travel arrangements and calling records, among others. The government will compile this information into a database, which officials will be free to peruse at their leisure.
Like any form of internal, warrantless surveillance, this system stands in blatant violation of the Constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. But as a general rule, rights can be violated if the government can demonstrate it has a compelling interest (fighting terrorism) to do so and that its methods create the least restrictions on our rights as possible.
This system seems to have scary potential — the federal government will have all of your old e-mails (“I love you, sweetheart”) and instant messages (“Gr8 to c u, brb”) on file, even if it never looks at them. But with access to a limitless supply of its citizens’ personal information, one would hope our leaders would focus on methods and personnel to ensure abuse of this system is kept to a minimum.
They haven’t. Here comes the frightening part.
The man in charge of the Office of Information Awareness, the government arm overseeing the project, is Vice Admiral John M. Poindexter. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, it’s probably because most of us still were playing in sandboxes while he was Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser. He WAS Reagan’s adviser, until someone discovered he had been selling weapons illegally to Iran to finance one of our Nicaraguan adventures in nation-building.
It seems logical that someone who went behind a president’s back to sell weapons to a bitter enemy, and then illegally diverted the funds would face some pretty steep consequences, to say the least. Luckily for Poindexter, he was able to play the role of Lester Earl in the Iran-Contra affair.
We all remember Earl, who took money to come to LSU, admitted it, but then agreed to name names if he could keep his money and the NCAA would leave him alone. Very similarly, only on a larger scale, Poindexter was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence. He was, however, granted immunity by an appeals court since he “came clean” and testified before Congress. How nice.
It is naïve at this point to deny more terrorist attacks against the United States are likely, or even inevitable. This realization that we are no longer safe is absolutely frightening, and as much as anyone, I support all measures necessary to ensure a peaceful future for America.
Giving the power to spy on our citizens’ electronic lives to a man who should have a prisoner serial number after his name, not a vice admiral title before it, is not one of those measures. If our memories are so short we are willing to accept unprecedented power for someone who has proven he won’t hesitate to blatantly abuse it, we will have to face the consequences.