Nov. 18, 2002 - 19:56 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

This Is Now

There is a man, whose family was under FBI surveillance for thirty years, the mother was suspected of being a communist spy. According to the article in today's newspaper the last entry in her FBI file is dated in 1973 and notes her opposition to the Viet Nam War.

Family name ? Fischer. Regina Fischer it was finally concluded by the FBI was not a spy. A thirty year file would mean the family came under FBI suspicion in 1943. For thirty years her history was researched, her mail was read, her cancelled checks were studied, her neighbors were questioned. Her son-in-law Russell Targ, a physicist in Palo Alto said, "They made it hard for her to keep a job."

The Philadelphia Inquirer under the Freedom Of Information Act obtained this information.

Bobby Fischer played chess, Regina Fischer was his mother. He was the man who played Russian Boris Spassky in Russia for the world chess title in 1972 and gained the World Championship.

I have tried to put myself in the shoes of the Fischer family and imagine the tension, worry and difficulty they encountered for thirty years and how it affected them mentally. I can't.

Bobby quit playing chess, forfeited his tile in 1975 three years later, became eccentric and no longer lives in the U.S. and he seems bitter toward us, wonder why ?

Regina Fischer was a pediatrician, died of cancer in 1997.

Thirty years, a lifetime for some of us. Questioning her neighbors I would guess is the one thing that probably caused the word to spread and cause her difficulties.

Now and then word leaks out about other folks who were "under investigation" by the FBI. Martin Luther King was one of them.

Robyn Blumner of the St. Petersburg Times put a column today in the Rocky Mountain News of November 18, 2002 titled, "Data Hoard Threatens Freedoms." In her article it gives information that, "No fewer than three national security agencies are currently working on developing massive "data mining," systems that will allow them to review billions of transactions from credit card purchases to car rentals in order to find terrorists hiding in plain sight."

It goes on to say, "The biggest, at the Defense Department, is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to the tune of two hundred million dollars a year. Its titled "Total Information Awareness."

It looks to my understanding that anything will be available soon to such an agency. What books you check out from the library, what books you buy with a credit card, the vagaries of your checking account and the amount of your savings, what stocks you own, what grades your kids are and have been making in school. Of course if a person has had mental problems (real or imaginary) where psychiatric treatment became recorded, has been in the slammer, his driving records, marriage records ad infinitum will be on the Fantastic File of Funny Facts our government will have on file to use against anyone they desire to be counted as suspicious -- like the Fischer's maybe ?

Data doesn't do a thing, it just sits there -- until some one starts going through in search (fishing expedition at times I suspect) of something against another person, whether actually that person is a terrorist (suspected communist back then) or not, some one has been sifting the files for damaging information about them.

It appears to me that we are paying tax dollars to our government to be able to do the Big Brother bit.

Nowadays there are video scanners mounted on poles in different cities so that people can be surveiled walking down the sidewalk as well as other dubious efforts to my way of thinking.

Considering the tax dollars, just thinking about the personnel that will be involved in this effort indicates to me that the salaries, wages etc. will be astronomical, you can do a lot with computers but still humans in the end will have to scan the data and possibly understand it. The tax dollars to set up the machinery, also will take a big chunk out of our tax dollar too. And as one who thinks a bit, the breakdowns of that machinery from time to time can result in tragic things happening to innocent folks to my way of thinking.

I guess from now on I will have to run a bug check in our bathroom before I do anything, for fear that Big Brother is looking, listening and smelling.

Homeland Security and all its ramifications frightens me -- not for myself, but for our kids, grandkids and their kids on into the future. Once these systems are set up, the machinery having the privilege of collecting this data are working, we are then vulnerable to any politician who has authority to misuse it to the total violation of our civil liberties.

If my every breath is monitored and on record to be used and misused by whoever, what actual civil liberties do I have ?

Paranoia and suspicion have been with us at least from the first recorded history. We try to fool ourselves how civilized we are and succeed until some one or thing plants the seed that becomes full blown paranoia.

Do I think we should have a type of Secret Service wing in our government, sure I do, it is needed. It is needed to surveil those who are actually acting in a suspicious manner or come from a country which is suspected of wanting to harm us. Not to make up lists of campus organizations and individuals that existed during the Kent State era and swap dingbat data back and forth.

There is one thought in my mind too, once in our country we had a quota system for those who were let in to become citizens. Seems to me that we should have one now and increase the protection of our borders.

In the 1940's then, was the Fischer family and who knows how many others. Then was the McCarty time and the destruction of careers.

The possible mining activities of Total Information Awareness and its yet to be set up "enforcement" arms - - - This Is Now . . . . . . . . . .

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