It's the Information Age and everyone has their hand in the cookie jar. It is so bad that most people police every bit of information they give out so that they avoid theft of things like Social Security numbers and credit card numbers. However, hackers and thieves can dive much deeper into your personal lives than you could ever imagine. So who do we trust with our most personal information? In a time of war, just how much and what type of security do we need in the homeland?

Us and Them: Homeland Security
by Valerie Howland

Homeland Security means a lot of things to a lot of different people. For a small Muslim community in Detroit, it means being rounded up for questioning, without the benefit of a lawyer's counsel. For "bleeding heart liberals", it means the reversal of restrictions placed on the FBI and the CIA in the Sixties and Seventies, restrictions that were meant to prevent an abuse of power. Homeland Security also means that an acquaintance of mine, a seemingly harmless, quiet girl, was stopped recently not only once, but twice in an airport for a random search. The first was a search through her luggage. The second was a search of her person.

Homeland Security for me means that I have no say in how my personal information is used. It's up for grabs in cyberspace. I'm inundated with invitations in my e-mail inbox daily from unwanted sexual advice to invitations to see pornographic images. I can select a high junk mail filter setting, but the junk gets through anyway, whether I like it or not.

Alas, this is the Information Age, but I was surprised to receive an invitation of another kind the other day. For a mere thirty dollars I can buy software that would give me staggering access to information I should not be in possession of at all. I could obtain vital statistics, find people who have changed their names, children who were adopted and their birth parents, and obtain a person's social security number. I could gain access to military databases and illegal drug archives, print maps with directions to anyone's house, send anonymous e-mail or surf anonymously on the Internet. I could also arm myself (if I were so inclined) by obtaining illegal software and access to piracy sites, anarchist sites, criminal databases, virus creation and prevention sites or I could learn about underground books and information. A person's bank account information, their driver's records and assets would also be at my fingertips. If I were curious enough, I could see my own FBI file and the FBI file of anyone else. I could find out about various tax liens. I could listen in on police scanners and read CIA records and court documents. All this, and I have no reasons for using this information, even if I were to buy the software, so what could a person with bad intentions do with it? I would venture to say he could do an awful lot of damage to any person or business he had a vendetta against.

The truth is, whether the government likes it or not, some people do have access to uncommon information, weapons and technology. Last month, I read in an USA Today article that since 1995, millions of dollars has been spent on illegally obtained U.S. military equipment. International traders, U.S. businessmen and military veterans, it reports, "typically route shipments through foreign front companies to disguise their ultimate customers." In-person checks of locations where the equipment is going to are conducted only when licensing paperwork is deemed suspicious. One businessman in particular claimed as much as "$1.5 million in annual sales to Iran for years." Even a former lieutenant governor candidate from Little Rock, can't be trusted. He tried to arrange a deal with Iraq for the purchase of military helicopters still equipped with gun and missile mounts for use as "pesticide sprayers."

While big deals are being conducted between rogue nations and big businessmen, ordinary citizens are being harassed and taken advantage of. I will advise my readers of this. Be aware of bush league pretenders.

My mother and I recently visited a friend what just got out of the hospital. After a short trip to the Dairy Queen,we were on our way home. At a four-way stop, we spied an ambulance with its lights on across the way, in the process of negotiating a turn. Like any good citizen, we waited for it to pass, but someone behind us honked in impatience. Like any good red-blooded American would do in such a situation, we exercised our freedom of statement so to speak, but once we started to drive away from the stop sign, the car behind us followed us with its lights flashing. My mother disregarded the unmarked car until we heard a siren. She pulled over with the knowledge that no self-respecting authority figure would stop two ordinary, harmless citizens such as us. Without telling us his name or showing us his badge, he asked us if we had a problem. My mother told him that we have no problem. She also let him know that she knew she was being harassed. The man had no business pulling us over. He let it be known that because the ambulance, a legitimate emergency vehicle, didn't have a siren on, there were no reasons for regarding it with undue caution. But a man in an unmarked car who could have purchased his light and siren from God knows where decided to put his lights and siren on for us, because he didn't like how we exercised our freedoms-- he has the right to pull us over? He knew we had him dead to rights. He left us after he said a tail behind the legs ‘OK.'

As citizens of the United States, we must be aware of those who would abuse their freedoms or take advantage of our trusting nature. We mustn't be paranoid or let our government be over-zealous in its attempts to protect us. Last month, in the Rolling Stone's National Affairs column, I learned that two years ago, the "Justice Department asked states to conduct a county by county assessment of potential terrorist threats in order to qualify for federal money and equipment to bolster anti-terrorism efforts. Local police were asked to identify up to fifteen groups or individuals dubbed ‘potential threat elements.'" Terrorist motivations could be "political, religious, racial, environmental and special interest."

Does this mean that (potentially) a member of the Democratic Party living under a Republican administration whose a member of the Sierra Club and the Baptist Church could be "motivated?" Or are the people who don't vote, who have no religion or special interests that we know of, the ones we shouldn't worry about?

In December, in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General John Ashcroft said "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists."

To John Ashcroft, I say this: I am a peace-loving person and I'm not afraid of losing my liberty. I don't intend to scare other peace-loving people "with phantoms of lost liberty." I exercised my liberties in the fight against an unnamed terrorist in my hometown. He was unarmed, but I fear the terrorists I don't see, the ones I can't fight with my liberties. My government should defend me as efficiently and rationally as possible, without having to resort to using me or my common, ordinary citizen friends as targets in the fight. After all, I defend my government everyday. Without it, how could I exercise the liberties I so rightly enjoy?

~~~~~

Valerie Howland holds a B.A. from the Ohio State University, class of 2001. She majored in English (with a focus in American Literature) and psychology. In her spare time, she likes to play the guitar and write poems, among other things. Some of her other scribbles can be found on her website.

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