(Host)
Commentator Willem Lange is a writer and storyteller who wonders if you
ever get the creepy feeling that somebody’s looking over your
shoulder. If so, he thinks you may not be suffering from paranoia.
Nowadays, somebody
probably is. Modern surveillance technology is becoming ubiquitous.
(Lange)
Many of us had a good chuckle when, during the last election campaign,
the newspapers published the photograph of a nocturnal miscreant in
Chelsea swiping campaign signs from the yard of an assistant county
judge. The judge had strapped a motion-activated game camera to a tree
near the signs. Chelsea’s a small town; everyone knew the star of the
show.
More serious is the case of Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old
Arab-American marketing student in California. When he took his Lincoln
in for an oil change, the mechanic spotted a battery pack, transmitter,
and wire antenna attached to its underside. Having no idea what the
device was, Afifi had it removed, took a photograph of it, and posted it
online, asking if anyone knew what it was.
Shortly afterward,
half a dozen armed police officers and FBI agents showed up at his door
demanding the return of their GPS unit, with which they had been
tracking his movements for about six months. When Afifi asked why, they
answered that it would "make this much more difficult for you if you
don’t cooperate." An FBI spokesman, contacted by a news reporter, said
he couldn’t comment because (Get ready for it!) "it’s an ongoing
investigation." The Supreme Court has subsequently declared the
unwarranted surveillance unconstitutional.
In a way, it’s
comforting; we’re doing better at catching the clowns who hold up
convenience stores for pocket change. But in another, it’s ominous.
You may have noticed that security personnel seem utterly without humor
or any appreciation of irony. Nobody in the business wants to be
holding the bag when the next attack occurs. And they’re being
monitored, too!
Lately we’ve learned the latest tools in the
security business are tiny drones that can fly around like songbirds, or
land where they can watch targets for days or weeks.
Hiking the
Canadian border, a swath of clear-cut from Fourth Connecticut Lake down
to the border crossing, I was a few hundred yards away from the station
when I said, "I hope they’ve got a washroom down there!" When we
arrived, they told us we didn’t need to check out, but if I wanted a
men’s room, there was one right around the corner. And was I a Canadian
citizen? How’d they know that? And why did they want to know if I was
a citizen? Well, he said, you said "washroom, not men’s room." I’ll
tell you: They’re everywhere. And they’re listening!
This is
Willem Lange in East Montpelier, and I gotta get back to work – which is
hard to do when you’re constantly looking over your shoulder.