I've been a little nervous about posting this, but with "warrant-less wiretaps" morphing into the "terrorist surveillance program" I figured it was about time.

If it wasn't this time in history this would seem a sophomoric comedy, a "punked" of proportions that are, well, legally unknowable.  Unfortunately, it is our time in history and you play the hand you're dealt: fear, rage, and the need to do something.

In late 2001, I noticed our mail server at work was taking some extra hops to get the mail delivered.  A little further investigation showed the mail was being routed through a box that I was not familiar with: Officer105.  I called our telecom provider's tech help and asked what "Officer 105" was.  Spam gate?  Virus filter?  "No, the voice said.  We'll look into it and get back to you."   I blew it off and didn't follow up (or even write down the number of the trouble ticket).  Days go by before I get back to even checking.  The hops are still there, the same address is there, but now the machine has no name.

I went to a staff meeting later that day and told everyone that there was a very good chance our email was being monitored, and it would be a wise thing to do to not write anything in email that you would feel uncomfortable explaining to the FBI.  The staff told me to take off the stupid tinfoil hat and stop interrupting the meeting.   Now we are being told that Echelon and Carnivore were real, and that telecom companies were actively participating in the surveillance.

So when the NYT finally stopped "holding the presses" on a story that they had been sitting on for over a year and blew the cover on BushCo's newest surprise, that feeling that had been lurking, that paranoia, suddenly slapped me and said "See? I told you so!" Now, I don't believe I got into a terrorist database from having my email and phone calls tapped. 

No, I think that might have been as a result of falling into another terrorist database.  

How does one get into a terrorist database?  One would think that it might take work- going to a Jihadi summer camp, or trying to blow something up.  For me, it was all about the desk.  Not just any desk, mind you.  A real wood desk, made of real cherry wood and very heavy.  The kind of desk that makes you want to sit behind it, that makes your home office cry out. So when we were packing up to move our offices and that desk was going to be trashed, well, I just couldn't help myself.  After properly calling "dibs", I was off to rent a truck.

Now for those of you that know Washington, you'll know that there is a little stretch of  Jeff Davis highway that goes past the Pentagon, and for a very long time after 9/11 it was inhabited by more Virginia State Patrol than one conjures up being present at a multiple fatality auto accident on the beltway.  The patrol had set up a safety perimeter around the Pentagon to guard against truck bombs while the inverted moat was being constructed around the building.  Big outdoor generators with lights, all kinds of cop cars from different jurisdictions with their blue lights going 24/7.  A real checkpoint.  I'm all kinds of OK with that.  The problem was, they set the blockade just before the exit ramp to  Washington Blvd and I-395 ( a quarter to half mile from the Pentagon) and stopped every truck coming out of DC and intending to go south on I-395.  Instead of protecting the Pentagon and legitimate truck traffic, a black hole was created that swallowed the unsuspecting.

After carefully loading and padding the desk in the truck, I stopped by our new office space in Georgetown, and then proceeded across the Key Bridge and on to Jeff Davis Highway, heading for 395- or so I thought.  I'm about thirty yards from the exit onto Washington Blvd., turn signal blinking when cop cars start to swarm and blue lights go berserko.  A State trooper gets out in the street in front of me and directs the little truck to pull into an empty lot, his hand on his gun.  

Well, I figured that the best case scenario would be that the cop will look at me (mid fifties, grey haired white guy), look at my license, look at the rental contract for the truck, type me into the NCIC to see if I'm really a bad person, and then I'll be on my way.  The "worst case" scenario I was running was a ticket and a fine.  Well, still the desk was free.....

So after producing the requested papers, the trooper told me to get out of the truck and open the back.  What?  Why?  What's the charge?  The officer, hand shifting on his handgun (but still holstered) repeated the order.  Well, in this case, compliance is the best strategy and I figure when he sees that great desk, we'll both smile and have a laugh, and I'll be on my way.  I open the back and climb in, pulling the pads off the cherry desk and show the officer.   The officer gets in the truck also, and says "open the drawers".  Somewhere I had this nagging idea that somehow there was supposed to be a process, that a cop needed to have a real good reason to examine your property in such detail.  Then, not only open the drawers, but remove them!  It's a fucking desk, you shaved-head -storm-trooper-lookin' moron.  The only thing that sets you apart from a guard dog is a brain!  Use it!

Well, obviously I kept that bit of advice to myself.  When he was satisfied that he could smell no diesel and ammonium nitrate, no telltale wiring to some huge lump of plastique, the real fun began.

He ordered me to come back over to the cruiser.  I was asked all the details of my existence, starting with social security number, telephone, address, work-   and he was writing this down on a form with the names of all the other poor bastards that had gotten swept in this misguided effort.  The crowning touch was the camera.  Yep.  Digital camera.  Well, fuck me.  Now I'm getting a little pissed off.  The cop motions and says "yeah, ok, now stand over here.  Alright, look at the camera. "  Just as he is about to snap, I flash the peace sign and give him a big smile.  Just behind that smile I'm about to boil over at this skinhead, shiny-black-stomper-booted, leather trimmed agent of social control.  I realize that the hook has been set, and I'm being reeled in.

Now I'm just a humble "computer mechanic", nowhere near the caliber of reader "hcberkowitz" from the Cafe, but even I know the likelihood of data entry mistakes when the data is so shoddily collected and then entered into a computer program by another set of hands.  I asked the skinhead how they knew what photo went with what report?  The answer?  "None of your business."  See, all this information wasn't being entered into a terminal in his car, it was being written by hand into a form to be transcribed by others.  Others who might have enough sense to be able to download the pictures properly and not make a mistake when associating my face and my data with, maybe, a real bad guy.

So, now I'm in a terrorist database.  Great.  Not even a ticket from Mr. Jackboots "just following orders", under-assistant East Coast terror checker.  The whole experience was less fulfilling than going to the cleaners- "here's my ticket- can I have my identity back?"  I'm surmising that since this checkpoint was by the Pentagon, that I have made it into at least some Virginia database and the Defense Department's threat assessment database- I'm in good company there, residing with all the other threats uncovered so far- Quakers, students, probably a whole bunch from the antiwar march in Washington last year.  Since we now know that the "walls" preventing government departments from sharing this kind of information have been torn down, I wonder just how many other department's databases I've been merged into.

I have said before in comments that even though I was less than happy to have him and the way he got there, after the "bullhorn moment", George Bush would have been my guy if he had lived up to his moment in history.

My questions are many, and answers are few.  Like I said before, you play the hand you're dealt.   But the tipping point for me is when you catch the bastards dealing off the bottom of the deck, they look you right in the eye and tell you that they don't care and they're going to keep doing it because they can.  No law, no review, no escape- once a terrorist, always a terrorist.

So I write this from that great cherry desk that's holding up my keyboard and monitor.  I feel like patient zero, wondering about the many people that have crossed electronic paths with me, and how many people that they in turn have touched.  I sure would like to know how we can take back our privacy from these thugs.  Nixon's ghost must be whispering into little Georgie's ear at night- "Enemies, they're all around you!  You have to know who they are!"

Well, the ghost is right.  As it was with Nixon and is now with little Georgie, we're all  the enemy.  Hence my new moniker, Alphonse Kada. 

Yes, Georgie, you have met the enemy- and the enemy is us.

Alphonse (Al) Kada