I’ll focus on only those agencies that deal with intelligence—not my intelligence or yours, as taxpayers, but intel: snippets of data that allow us to stomp on the “bad guys.”  You can focus on any other part of the government, of course, and ask the same question.  Here I’m just referring to the usual alphabet soup of acronyms: DHS, DEA, CIA, FBI, etc.  In some sense, they are the most important ones when analyzing losses to our personal freedoms.  They are inextricably involved with the future of our democracy.  They also provide good examples of waste in government, especially if you add the cost of the military’s bureaucracy.  And they are the most important to me as a writer.

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If you’re a soon-to-be or recent retiree, this short story might have special meaning.  Consider it a new twist on Huxley’s Brave New World.  Or, for the people out there looking for jobs, consider it a warning to check out the retirement plans when you are interviewing.  It is a brave new world.  Enjoy.

***

Brenda moved along the dim corridor and stopped at room 114.  After checking off the visit on her list, she peeked into the room at her patient.

Rafael, the old retiree, sat in his rocker, muttering to himself.  As usual, he was smiling and staring out the window between the thick wrought iron bars at the bleak Virginia countryside.

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The release of the Afghan Papers this weekend—notably in the N.Y. Times today—brings to the fore once again the perpetual conflict between national security and personal morality.  We don’t like to talk about this gray area even though most of us probably have opinions about particular cases, but I will try to touch upon some of the issues and hope for the best.

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Just when you thought a good Le Carre spy novel was a thing of the past, we’ve got Russian spies again.  Le Carre’s books never translated well into movies (e.g. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold)—they were tales focused on the dark inner workings of the U.S. versus U.S.S.R. spy networks, more character-driven than action-driven.  Sure, movies were made (I liked The Russia House best), but they weren’t blockbusters.  Compare his tales to Ludlum’s, if you will, where there was plenty of action that translates well to the screen when you allow Hollywood to modernize the plot (and change it beyond recognition as in the Bourne trilogy).

Yet, here we are, smack in the middle of a real life Le Carre novel with a lot of Boris and Natasha thrown in for good measure.  To summarize the characters so far: there are the Murphys, Richard and Cynthia, of Montclair, NJ; there are Vicky Pelaez and Juan Lazaro of Yonkers, NY; Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills of Arlington, VA; Donald Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley of Cambridge, MA; Anna Chapman of NYC; Mikhail Semenko and Christopher Metsos of who knows where.  Metsos is the Boris-like fellow and was apprehended in Cyprus on his way to Budapest; he may be the paymaster.  Chapman is the Natasha-like bomb shell that moved around the NYC night club circuit.  At least the first two couples have kids that say they had no idea their parents were spies and neighbors of the various couples are dumbfounded.

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Judge Vaughan R. Walker of the Federal District Court in California is now in the process of deciding on the legal challenge to California’s Proposition 8 which prohibits gay marriages.  The case was unusual in that lawyers David Boies and Theodore Olson, opponents in the hanging chad case associated with the 2000 election, teamed up to challenge the Proposition.  Whatever the good judge’s decision, it will be appealed and probably work its way up to the Supreme Court.

You might be asking, why is Steve worrying about gay marriage?  My answer is that it’s part of a more general problem, the attack on individual rights.  In fact missing in all those presentations before Judge Walker is the important legal analysis of a question I’ve hammered at many times in this blog: should voters have the power to restrict the rights of individuals?  The secondary and related question is: if the courts don’t protect the rights of individuals, who will?

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Three recent cases in the news struck me as disturbing since they point to the most insidious danger represented by our anti-terrorism efforts:  Our willingness to give up our own freedoms to combat jihadist fruitcakes.  This gray issue of how much surveillance and protection is enough dominates much of the moral ambiguity portrayed in my two novels Full Medical and Soldiers of God and, to some extent, The Midas Bomb.  People often don’t give it a second thought and that worries me too.

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I’m not a fan of bumper stickers.  I don’t use them.  Decals are hard enough to get off-a bumper sticker is just a big decal.  And if you leave either one on they turn crackly, ugly and illegible.  But aesthetics aside, I generally wonder why people publicize their pet causes in a political environment where emotional and sometimes violent response is possible.  At the very best they risk a finger flash and at the very worst the NRA guy following is packing heat.

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Recent French ministry actions are examples of how authoritarian regimes and wannabe fascists attack their internet critics.  The internet has proven to be a powerful extension to a free press.  Not needing much infrastructure like printing presses nor human resources like reporters, copy writers, and editors, this chaotic media seems relentless in its pursuit and practice of free expression.

While it is not surprising that China with its heavy-handed control of Google and other incidents continues its attack on internet freedom, France’s recent moves show fascism is alive and well in Europe.  Secretary of State Nadine Morano has led the charge.  She recently went after a private citizen, a housewife with three kids, who caught the minister in a lie.  She subpoenaed the person’s internet address, obtained her identity, and sued her for “public insult towards a member of the ministry,” punishable by a fine of up to $18,000 (that this is possible is fascism pure and simple).

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I haven’t dedicated enough blog space to the dangers of electronic privacy invasion and identity theft, so this review of The Broken Window helps to fill the void.  Talk about fiction with social relevance!  Deaver’s novel is a scary expose of how Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984, and every fascist’s dream of complete control over citizens’ lives, can be achieved.  We have the tools to do this to ourselves right now-it is no longer just in the realm of sci-fi.

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Time is a strange thing.  As we turn back our clocks this weekend, I would like to dwell on how politics affects time.  We mostly talk about it the other way round, that is, time affecting politics, which we call history.  If you consider time to be immutable, like the flowing of the Styx, then you haven’t lived in Massachusetts.

First, what’s this business about jumping ahead one hour in the spring and back an hour in the fall?  If it seems completely arbitrary, you’re correct-it is.  It has been defined via a political process and we all know politicians shouldn’t meddle with science.  They could say, of course, that I shouldn’t meddle with politics.  This relation isn’t transitive, though.  Politicians can’t do much besides politics; that’s why they gravitate towards politics.  As a scientist, I can do a lot of things, some better than others-even write (I’m not an engineer).

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