Pubdate: Fri, 12 May 2006
Source: Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
Copyright: 2006, Denver Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.rockymountainnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/371
Author: Bill Johnson

JOHNSON: MAYBE THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON ALREADY

I tend not to fall victim to paranoia, sometimes to my  scary 
detriment. You just don't, I figure, raise your  hand and twice 
volunteer to walk the ugly streets of  Iraq if you suffer from such a malady.

So tell me, why is it this morning that I flat want to  climb back 
into bed, and pull the sheets directly over  my head?

This is how bad I've got it: I'm even thinking of  calling Qwest, and 
I've struggled mightily to make our  phone company go away the past 
few years, looking  elsewhere for my phone and Internet service.

I've long considered the Denver-based telecom to be  bad, slow and 
overpriced. Now I think I want them back.

What we think we know today is that Qwest, alone, at  least had a 
backbone, refusing to fall to its knees  before a government intent 
on collecting millions of  our phone records. Like those calls I've 
made to my  wife, kids and friends.So call me paranoid - people  have 
- - over news that the National Security Agency has  been secretly 
collecting the phone records of tens of  millions of Americans not 
suspected of committing any  crime, using data provided by AT&T, 
Verizon and Bell  South.

"Why do you care?" a friend said. "If you've got  nothing to hide, 
you've got nothing to worry about!"

If it weren't so warm today, I'd put the electric  blanket on top of 
the sheets.

Why aren't we getting this?

On morning and afternoon talk radio, which in recent  years has 
evolved - mostly for the worse - as our  communal breakfast and lunch 
conversation table, they  were still going on about illegal 
immigration.  Goodness.

Never mind that the government has been compiling  detailed records 
of calls innocent Americans have made  across town and across the 
country to family, friends  and business contacts simply by asking 
those three giant telecoms to turn the records over.

For all the concern this revelation caused locally, it  might as well 
have concerned last night's Red  Sox-Yankees score.

We could all give a damn.

What is worse, it now appears that the Bush  administration has lied 
about the scope of the NSA  phone surveillance program.

The president himself insisted late last year that the  NSA's phone 
activities were focused exclusively on  international calls, that 
"one end of the communication  must be outside the United States."

On Thursday, Bush did not confirm or deny that the NSA  has collected 
many millions of domestic phone records -  as reported by USA Today - 
but he did assure us that  our personal privacy is being "fiercely protected."

Say what?

He may as well have barked, "Pay no attention to that  man behind the curtain!"

And way too many of us, it appears, are perfectly  content to do exactly that.

It's a huge example of how due process stands no chance  against 
today's technology.

For a smaller, more local example, consider the case of  Makenna 
Salaverry, Megan Malone and Somerset Tullius.

The three women appeared at a press conference  Wednesday at the 
University of Colorado at Boulder,  where they go to school, to 
announce that they are  suing the school for posting their pictures 
online -  postings that offered a bounty, to boot, for  information 
leading to their arrests because they  attended a pro-marijuana rally.

The women are alleging civil rights violations,  claiming they never 
smoked marijuana, making it unfair  to brand them as criminals on, of 
all places, the  Internet.

The university, though, maintains it posted "no  trespassing" signs 
in Farrand Field, so the women broke  the law just by showing up.

The university's case relies solely on its pictures of  the event, 
the posting of them on the Internet, and,  later, relying on snitches 
to identify those depicted.

By this standard, should the surveillance cameras  Denver police 
operate along Colfax Avenue in Capitol  Hill capture me playfully 
patting my wife, I should  fully expect to be hauled in for assault.

Silly, you say?

I suppose my expectation of privacy when I telephone my  children in 
Virginia - including the times I did so  from the Middle East - is 
silly, as well.

At what point will we finally say enough!

"Well, if it keeps me safe, if it prevents some crazy  (terrorist) 
from blowing my (backside) off, it's a  price we all have to pay," a 
friend only a few minutes  ago told me.

It is why I fear that the terrorists won long ago.  Perhaps it was 
the passage of the Patriot Act that  triggered and, later, confirmed 
this thinking, the way  it not long ago forced Joyce Meskis at the 
Tattered Cover bookstore to hire lawyers and actually go to  court to 
prevent the government from learning what her  customers were buying 
and reading.

It is virtually inescapable, the daily chatter about  freedom, about 
defending it, about spreading it and  democracy around the globe. 
Those in power utter this  to us, almost reflexively now, as if a mantra.

Today, I truly wonder what that word means. I used to  think that I 
knew: It's what they taught us in civics  class.

Now, I barely recognize it.

I'm going back to bed.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman