Who Will Babysit the Babysitters?

His appointment, they heralded, would usher in a new era of stifled civil and personal liberties. Women, their bellies full with the offspring they no longer had the right to abort, would walk five steps behind the husbands who now worked 60-hour weeks without any health benefits or job security, a significant portion of their paychecks going toward faith-based initiatives and corporate welfare.

The rest of the population shrugged and assumed Bush would be another figurehead who lacked the authority to drastically change the status quo, even if his administration crossed its fingers and prayed to the Lord Jesus Christ that it would find a way to limit our rights and grant more power to the government without considerable public dissent. The kind of prayer that every administration makes, knowing that it likely won't come true, and that the most it can hope for is continuing the international family planning volley.

Then, terrorists flew planes into buildings and killed thousands of people, scaring even the most rational Americans into valuing security over freedom. If you've got nothing to hide, you shouldn't be afraid of increased scrutiny. The government is looking out for our best interests. It wants to ensure that we're safe, and there's no point in having freedom if we don't have the security to enjoy it.

Isn't it great that Bush is the president and not Al Gore? Gore would have invited Osama bin Laden over to watch inner-city school children and senior citizens struggling to pay for prescriptions do an interpretive dance on how terrorism hurts their feelings and negatively impacts the environment.

But Bush -- we've got such a strong leader with such a strong administration that will save us from the covert actions of a loose-knit group of religious fundamentalists whose language only one person employed by the federal government can speak because if you've ever smoked pot more than 15 times and can't lie well enough to pass a polygraph, it doesn't matter than you can speak every dialect of Urdu, Dari, Arabic and Farsi. We've got ethical standards, son.

The terrorists already have years on us. They've been scheming for the past decade, taking advantage of police agencies that expended more man power to save the country from high-priced whores and pot dealers than on tracking people who threaten our lives more than they offend our sensibilities. They played the system, and the system is pissed.

And we're going to pay for it.

The Pentagon's new project, called Total Information Awareness (TIA), is a prototype database that has the potential to track every embarrassing prescription you place, every pop starlet CD you buy, every wart you have removed, every trip you make to a foreign country, every subversive book you borrow from the library, every quarter you drop in a slot machine, every withdrawal grade you get in school -- anything you've done that wasn't done under Internet anonymity.

And if the government had its way, you wouldn't even have that corner of the Web in which to pretend you're a model who plays Everquest because you're studying for a breakthrough role in an independent sci-fi movie.

Anonymity on the Internet has annoyed both Democrats and Republicans, and if opposition hadn't been strong enough, it's possible the government's plan to track Internet users, called eDNA, would have gone forward.

A description of the eDNA proposal that was sent to participants in a workshop to discuss the feasibility of the program read in part: "We envisage that all network and client resources will maintain traces of user eDNA so that the user can be uniquely identified as having visited a Web site, having started a process or having sent a packet. This way, the resources and those who use them form a virtual `crime scene' that contains evidence about the identity of the users, much the same way as a real crime scene contains DNA traces of people."

Which goes back to the thrust of TIA: that we're all suspects.

It's questionable if TIA could get off the ground and function as planned because the technology used by the federal government is antiquated and bogged down by complex regulations that dictate how to upgrade and few employees entrusted to protect us are familiar with technology more advanced than AOL, but if this program is feasible, it'll be up and running as quickly as defense contractors can fall over each other to submit proposals.

If TIA becomes operational, it will not be stopped. Not if we kill Osama bin Laden. Not if we kill every human committed to terrorizing the United States. There always will be enemies who need to be tracked, even if we have to create them.

Programs of this magnitude, once politicians realize the potential, do not get scaled back or killed. They find other uses, by which point we'll be so used to the idea of the federal government looking out for us that we won't bat an eye when the database's new purpose is to find druggies, prostitutes, activists outside the mainstream, etc.

Our Social Security Numbers were never meant to be used to the extent they now are, but when it became obvious that it was a useful means of tracking people, the uses expanded, and now one has to jump through hoops to convince an HMO to change one's member ID from one's SSN to a random number sequence because of the potential for identity theft.

Rear Adm. John Poindexter, former national security adviser to President Reagan, is developing the database under the Total Information Awareness Program. Poindexter was convicted on five counts of misleading Congress and making false statements during the Iran-Contra investigation. Those convictions were later overturned, but this isn't the man who should be in charge of sensitive data that can be abused.

In a recent discussion with The Washington Post, Poindexter said that any operational system must include safeguards to govern the collection and sharing of data.

The only safeguards the government will put in place are the ones that cover its own ass. It's a matter of national security, and if we tell you the activities we believe are indicative of an impending terrorist attack, then the terrorists will know what we're looking for, and if they know what we're looking for, they'll stop putting C-4 purchases on their Continental Onepass Mastercard.

You will not know what triggers a flashing, neon red flag to appear next to one's name. You will not know if cashing a CD and depositing $15,000 in your checking account in anticipation of your upcoming move to another state coupled with buying a one-way ticket to your new home will send the FBI to your front door. You will not know if you are on a watch list that will cause headaches when you attempt to fly or apply for a job, nor will you know how to remove your name from that list if it is placed there erroneously.

You will be presumed guilty, or at least suspect, until you can account for every aspect of your life that the government does not already have in its database.

But how will the government determine who is a terrorist among the "innocents" when terrorists are told to blend into the population? If Nawaf Alhazmi paid for his trips to strip clubs with a credit card, would the database not have flagged him because no true Muslim would ogle naked women? Terrorists, Muslim or otherwise, who are serious about their plans are going to do all they can to not raise suspicions. Even if it means not earning frequent flyer miles when they buy fertilizer.

Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and a retired Navy admiral, explains that TIA will attempt to search "vast quantities of data to determine links and patterns indicative of terrorist activities."

A terrorist entering the country might get a visa from the State Department; then he might get a driver's license, take flying lessons, buy a lot of chemicals and purchase a gun, Aldridge said.

Stop after the first semi-colon. The State Department employs people to issue visas. They're called consular officers, and they're in almost every country. It is part of their job to prevent terrorists from entering the United States. They are the gatekeepers. If that job is not being done properly, an overhaul of the system is necessary. It should not reach the point that a terrorist is in the country trying to get a driver's license.

But if it does, the Department of Motor Vehicles in each state employs people to issue driver's licenses. It is part of their job to prevent terrorists from obtaining one. They are the gatekeepers. If that job is not being done properly, an overhaul of the system is necessary. It should not reach the point that a terrorist is in the country, legally driving a car to flying lessons.

But if it does, the Federal Bureau of Investigations employs people to investigate possible terrorist activities, such as an Arab flight student wanting to know only how to control a plane, not how to take off or land. It is part of their job to prevent terrorist acts. They are the gatekeepers. If that job is not being done properly, an overhaul of the system is necessary. It should not reach the point that a terrorist is in the country, legally driving a car and flying a cropduster.

But if it does, a system that tracks the movement and shopping habits of everyone in the country is not the solution, nor is a new bureaucratic agency that will reward billions of dollars in contracts to big business and exempt many of its activities from the Freedom of Information Act.

The Homeland Security Act, rushed through the Senate and signed by President Bush, will block most public access to the actions of the Department of Homeland Security under the rationale that this protection will encourage private companies to cooperate with the agency without fear of exposing corporate secrets. Watch as Microsoft denies there are any bugs in its software that can make your computer vulnerable to attacks.

All of this effort and secrecy to track down a few thousand terrorists who, thus far, have managed to elude detection through the wily tactics of speaking a language not enough federal employees understand, living in countries that don't play by Cold War rules and hiding in caves that no Ivy-educated, suit-wearing CIA agent wants to spend years infiltrating.

Islamic terrorists aren't geniuses. They're agile, and their ranks aren't littered with civil servants whose only dream is to make GS-13 before retirement.

The country won't be safer because a cubicle weasel knows you bought The Fine Art of Vaginal Fisting days before you paid for a box of Monistat-7 with your Visa debit card, but you might make someone's work day a little less dull.

Providing jack-off material for white misogynists since 1997.

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