22 March 2008

Nobody Knows (You're a Dog)


The above cartoon by Peter Steiner has been reproduced from page 61 of July 5, 1993 issue of The New Yorker, (Vol.69 (LXIX) no. 20) only for academic discussion, evaluation, research and complies with the copyright law of the United States as defined and stipulated under Title 17 U. S. Code.

This is going to irritate a good friend of mine, maybe more than one. C'est la vie.

The cyber equivalent of prying our cold dead fingers off our cold dead guns happened without our ever knowing. Gone like the wind in the fine print that I have to use under the cartoon that starts this piece to ensure that the copyright cops don't flag me down.

I hate it when that happens. The normal outrages and violations of our liberty are things that confront us every day, and now go without comment. Flying out to the Left Coast last week it seemed like most people know the drill, on both sides of the security barrier, and we meekly strip for the nice man in the TSA shirt.

I remember a world that was not like that. We gave up a lot for a variety of perfectly good reasons- metal detectors at the airports first, and then everywhere, and then the intrusive “assume the position” for those numbnuts from Wackenhutt Security.

Coming back east, the initial screener gestured me out of the Premier line and over to the “all others” line. I was going to complain until I heard the shouting of the TSA goon at the head of the line I would have been in. He was shouting at the sheep-like Spring Break travelers like a Marine Drill Instructor.

I was alarmed by that demonstration of power given over to some idiot, but not enough to comment on it. I saw something this morning that is even more monstrous, and I am not going to mince words about it.

I'm pissed. When we gave up the broad assortment of personal liberties after 9/11, we were assured that there was no “big brother” thing coming. There would only be judicious access by the Feds to all sorts of databases.

That is baloney. I have seen this coming for a long time, ever since my eyes were opened to the possibilities of the digital age. We thought for a while that cyberspace was the Wild West. It is in some ways, though not quite the way you would think.

I chuckled about that yesterday when some pedophile from Sweden flew into Dulles about the same time I did, coming the other way. He thought he was going to meet a 14-year-old and have sex with her. Instead, he met the Fairfax County cops, who had been running a sting operation.

Well and good. Bastard deserved it. What a change of life; one has to marvel at it. Comfortable Scandinavia in the morning, and twenty years in a County slammer in Virginia by evening. Besides, doesn't everything go in Sweden? Why come here?

It got me to thinking, since everything we are and do is out there on the net, especially if you spend most of the working week answering e-mail from other wage slaves, and try to write about other stuff on your free time. It all leaves tracks. The Google people remember them for us. If I had looked up “pedophile” to make sure I spelled it right, it would be in the database that I was interested, and might even get my Internet Protocol address flagged for special monitoring.

Maybe you remember the New Yorker cartoon that captured perfectly what we used to think. I included it above, in a thumb-nail version that may-or may not- be in accordance with the “fair use” provisions of the copyright laws.

It features the dog who can be anyone he wants to be in cyberspace. That apparently is even what Governor Elliott Spitzer seemed to be thinking, though of course we all know now that he is a dog, even if what he was doing really does not seem to be a crime, just doglike behavior.

In fact, the first order of business for the New Governor was to make a public confession that he was a dog, too. That would normally fall into the category of “too much information,” but there was an added wrinkle that his wife was not only with him, as has become the norm, but that she had a confession of her own. She had been a female dog herself on occasion- I am too delicate to use the technical term- and now instead of one adulterer in the Gubernatorial mansion in Albany, we have two.

This shocking triple revelation of things that are no-one's business would be bad enough, except for the more ominous part, the mechanism which enabled the Government set the hounds loose.

Elliott got nailed because law enforcement got onto him. He was snagged by counter-terrorism software. You might ask how a sitting governor and former crusading DA might get onto a watch list, so here it is, related courtesy of alert Newsweek reporters Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff.

They line out a chilling scenario of how the laws enacted to stop the transfer of terrorist funds- a worthy goal- wound up dogging a governor. The fine-print in the USA Patriot Act gave the Treasury and the Justice Departments brand new authorities.

I am fundamentally opposed to granting enhanced authority to anyone, since most of us are dogs at heart, given the opportunity. Treasury is now in a position to command reporting from the banks on the financial transactions of the customers.

That was not enough. Treasury issued that mandated the financial institutions to report “unusual transactions” in the interest of tracking wire transfers or cash withdrawals. Substantial penalties are included for non-compliance, and thus advanced software was dutifully loaded down at the bank to detect anomalies- or what someone would like to think of anomalies- in the gallizon daily transactions that make the Republic strong.

You have probably run into them. My Visa credit card got turned off in mid-transaction one time because the software thought the Navy Exchange (“NEX”) was a suspicious biller. The new software is much better and much more subtle. One of the algorithms assigns a “risk level” to each customer, derived from a formula that is as complex as the FICO scoring to determine the credit score- net worth, real property and profession are just some of them.

Is your skin starting to crawl yet? There is more. Much more.

There is even a rating factor for "politically exposed person." The acronym is “PEP.”

That is a curious thing. Being over on the national security side of Spookdom all my career, there was an explicit prohibition on looking at what we called “US persons.”

There was no ban on looking at foreigners, and of course, on the justice side of the fence, the FBI can look at anyone it pleases, American or not.

According to Newsweek, there were over 200,000 Suspicious Activity Reports in 2001, after the Patriot Act was passed. But remember, the law was passed hastily late in the year, after 9/11. A million and a quarter SARs were filed last year, and are available in a central database that law enforcement entities nationwide can trawl through.

I was part of the effort to make information sharing much easier when I was in the government, and intended to make some money at the same game in the private sector.

What got Elliot sent to the kennel was his transfer of funds from one account to another under someone else's name. While it is not illegal, the algorithm tipped the bank to flag the transaction and file it with the Feds. The Feds did the Jerry MacGuire thing and followed the money, and that is how Elliott wound up out of a job and another dog got his day.

I know, I know. I can hear it already: “if you are not doing anything wrong, what are you worried about?”

That isn't the point. That attitude turns everything in the Constitution on its head, and it means something fundamental in our liberty-based system has been confiscated without comment.

If something can be abused, it will be abused. We are all dogs, after all, and it is only a matter of a few keystrokes to change “PEPs” to whatever other scoring factor you might like. Ex-spooks. Crank columnists. The passport records of all three presidential candidates were accessed by contractors, according to the revelation de jour yesterday, apparently just for laughs by unruly Government contractors. Or that is the story, anyway.

If they are going to mess with Hillary Clinton, just think what they would do to you.

They are going to get my keyboard when they pry it from my cold dead fingers. That is my right of free speech, guaranteed by the precious Constitution. But by the time they get around to doing it there might not be anyone left to read.

Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com