IT'S 1984

>"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized." ~ George Orwell, 1984

In the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, our government seized the opportunity to make something of a prophet out of George Orwell, albeit 17 years late. This civil liberty trampling came in the form a piece of legislation commonly called The USA Patriot Act. The contrived acronym stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, increasing the ability of law enforcement agencies to search telephone, e-mail communications, medical, financial, and other records; easing restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the United States; expanding the Secretary of the Treasury authority to regulate financial transactions, particularly those involving foreign individuals and entities; and broadens the discretion of law enforcement and immigration authorities in detaining and deporting immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts. The act also expands the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, thus enlarging the number of activities to which the USA PATRIOT Act’s expanded law enforcement powers can be applied.

On the surface This seems all well and good. Anything to help our government track down and stop potential terrorists before they could strike again. Who wouldn't want that? But at what cost to our personal privacy and civil liberties as afforded us by the Bill of Rights?

Three years ago I had been selling items on the internet auction site, EBay. I had sold a handful of items and had packaged them up and told my wife I'd only be gone a few minutes as I was taking them to the Post Office to ship to the auction winners. Most of the items were Star Wars action figures or other related memorabilia, but on this day, one of the items was a USB powered electronic timer. It was an electronic timing device that had the ability to run multiple counters, going up or down and was run by plugging into a USB (universal Serial Bus) port on a computer. This particular item had been won by an individual in Ontario, Canada. I got to the counter and piled my packages there for the Postal worker to weigh and determine postage. I had the timer set aside as it was the only international package I had that day. When He had finished marking all of the domestic packages, I handed him the timer box. He started to input the information and suddenly stopped, looked up at me, then reached and turned his monitor away from me so that I couldn't see it. He paused, then explained that there were a couple issues with sending this item internationally and since it was so busy if I wouldn't mind stepping to a side waiting area until a supervisor could come and get things straightened out. At this point I didn't think this was any big deal as I'd had many snags in my time shipping packages out of the country. So I stepped into this little alcove and sat at a table waiting patiently. The next individual to enter the room was a local Sheriff's officer (whose station is conveniently located right across the street) walked in and asked me to come with him. When I asked if I had a choice, he sternly looked at me and said "No". I was ushered into a small room and sat at a table. When I asked what this was about, all I was told was that someone would be in shortly to explain it to me. Forty-Five minutes later a gentleman entered the room, and identified himself as an agent with Homeland Security. He sat down opposite me, and laid a file folder that was easily over an inch thick full of papers down on the tale. The folder had my name on it. Inside was documentation of everywhere I'd ever lived, gone to school, worked, and held bank accounts. Names and contact information for extended family and friends. Detailed accounts of all the phone accounts, land line or cell, I'd ever had, internet service providers, online accounts like EBay, and even my membership as a field investigator in the UFO investigation group MUFON. What followed was 4 hours of intense questioning regarding my knowledge and connection to the person who I was sending the electronic timer too. I was not allowed to call my wife or a lawyer, and when denied those requests, the Patriot Act was cited saying they were not compelled to allow those things at that time and could hold me without them for considerably longer. At one point I was asked if I still belonged to MUFON and I jokingly asked "Why, you guys hiding something?" He stoically looked at me and responded, "I'm asking the questions here". What I didn't know at that time was that the individual that had purchased the timer was on the Terrorism Watch List and they wanted to know who I was and why I was sending him a computerized electronic timing device. After insisting again and again that I had no connection to this person they asked if they could inspect my car. I told them to go ahead and that all they'd find in there was probably a few french fries dropped between the seats from my kids' Happy Meals. They proceeded to run bomb sniffing dogs through my car. Once that turned up negative, I joked with them again, that they could check my house too since it was only a few blocks away. They never did think I was very funny. Though at that point they seemed satisfied that I wasn't connected in any way other than the EBay buyer/seller relationship, but did ask me to not alert the individual of the day’s events and that if I did, they would know. I asked what would happen with him and the item and I was told that they "would deliver it personally." They let me go and I returned home to try and explain to my wife why I'd been gone nearly 5 hours when it should have only taken 15 minutes.

It seems a bit funny and so stereotypical in a "cloak and dagger" kind of way now, but it certainly wasn't then. It was unnerving to see how much information they could collect within such a short amount of time...or was it something they already had? I'd heard rumors that MUFON membership got you put on a watch list, but I'm not sure I was ever that much of a conspiracy theorist. (Okay, maybe I was). I felt way more violated than protected at their ability to collect the sum total of my life into a folder in forty-five minutes. Do we really want to abandon all of our rights to any illusion of privacy just so the government can tell us that we're safer from terrorism? For me, I'd much rather preserve my civil liberties and rights to privacy and take my chances with the dramatically low chance that I'll be the victim of a terrorist attack. It's things like The Patriot Act affording ever expanding powers to the alphabet groups within our government or organizations like Infragard that empower everyday citizens as watchdogs for the FBI, that trample our constitutional rights without regard and push us closer and closer to being victims of an Orwellian "Thought Police" government, and the fact that Obama has reversed his earlier opposition to the provisions of the Patriot Act, and instead sought to have them extended, very well may be my biggest disappointment with his administration to date. It's easy to dismiss my position as reactionary or paranoid, until you're sitting across a table from a folder with your name on it. Be careful...Big Brother is watching.