It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.

These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread.

Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.


 
Remember Total Information Awareness, that spooky program in which the Government would gather all your information -- from bank accounts, credit histories, insurance, mortgage lenders and other private sources -- to generate a profile of citizens and identify potential terrorist suspects in advance so pre-emptive action could be taken against them before anything actually happened, before anybody ever actually committed any crime whatsoever?

Remember how Americans rose up to say that this invasion of privacy, this government snooping into private business, was unacceptable? Remember how we kept TIA from happening?

Well, it turns out we didn't. The Bush Administration just waited a bit and renamed the program.

Now it's called "Secure Flight." Just as in Total Information Awareness, the Government will gather all your information -- from bank accounts, credit histories, insurance, mortgage lenders and other private sources -- to generate profiles of citizens and identify potential terrorist suspects in advance so pre-emptive action can be taken against these potential suspects?

Gee, JUST LIKE TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS!

Except, of course, it has a different name now. And they've learned that putting an all-seeing eye on top of a pyramid for a logo is a bad public relations move too. That makes it all better.

Where is the hue and cry? Where is the outrage? What are we, SHEEP?

I know you're not a sheep. You're active. You've read George Orwell. You care too much to let George W. Bush and John Ashcroft morph into Big Brother.

So when I give you these links to write your Representative, to write your Senator, to write George W. Bush and to write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, you'll take the 15 minutes to do it, right?

The media is gliding by this story in a scary fashion, and the Bush Administration will push this initiative as far as they can take it -- so long as the spotlight is not turned on their efforts to sap American liberty. It's up to us.

Posted by James Cook at 9:46 AM. # (permalink)




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