A Stitch in Haste

So first we learn that the NYPD is sending covert agents, not only outside New York City, not only outside New York State, but even outside the country to collect data on law-abiding citizens engaging in law-abiding activities.

Now we learn that even car rental agencies and mortgage companies are playing the pawns of Big Brother:

The Office of Foreign Asset Control's list of "specially designated nationals" has long been used by banks and other financial institutions to block financial transactions of drug dealers and other criminals. But an executive order issued by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has expanded the list and its consequences in unforeseen ways. Businesses have used it to screen applicants for home and car loans, apartments and even exercise equipment, according to interviews and a report by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area to be issued today.

"The way in which the list is being used goes far beyond contexts in which it has a link to national security," said Shirin Sinnar, the report's author. "The government is effectively conscripting private businesses into the war on terrorism but doing so without making sure that businesses don't trample on individual rights."

Because of course there's always the risk that al Qaeda will fly a sub-compact — or a mortgage — into a skyscraper.

And it is of course not al Qaeda whose transactions are blocked. People with partial name matches get flagged, and the penalties for firms that "do business with terrorists" are so draconian that it makes more sense for them to simply decline the business rather than risk a run-in with the government.

Implementing a (hopefully) reliable system of keeping "suspicious" (defined how?) individuals off commercial airliners is not per se irrational. Keeping "not truly suspicious" people from renting a car or getting a home equity loan is per se irrational — as is conscripting private businesses to do to the government's work.

Meanwhile, keep in mind that even before the War on Terror, utilities could and did gleefully turn over customer records, on the (preposterous) Supreme Court reasoning that a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in their phone or electric bill. One must also assume that the same reasoning would apply to pay-per-view purchases and DVD rentals.

It is still unsettled as to how private one's library usage may be. And we were also just told that the FBI has been so slap-happy with its use of National Security Letters and FISA warrant applications, that even they can't calculate exactly how many times they've broken the law.

So I ask again: Is there anyone who isn't spying on us?

The terrorists want to destroy our way of life. They are succeeding.