Washington-Some people read George Orwell's "1984" with a sense of dread. Others read it and think, "Hmmm, cool idea!"
It must have taken such a mind to dream up the "data-mining" proposal that's included in the Homeland Security Act that passed the House last week in a Republican-brokered agreement by 299-121 vote.
It would enable law enforcement to peek into just about every public and private act of every American-and without the ubiquitous cameras and "tele-screens" that Big Brother used to control folks in Orwell's nightmare.
Just think of it. Think of all the stuff about you that is now stored in some computer somewhere.
In the commercial world there are your credit card purchases, your academic record, your bank records, your vacation trips, your medical prescriptions, the Web sites you surf, your e-mails...!
Then there's the stuff that the government has on you, like your driver's license, passport records, tollway I-PASS records, marriage and divorce records.
Yup there's all kinds of good stuff that people would like to know about you that you might not like for others to know.
Now the U.S. Department of Defense reportedly wants to set up "a virtual centralized grand database," a computerized dossier on everyone's private life, a "Total Information awareness" about every U.S. citizen.
And who is seeking all of this? John Poindexter, the national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan who was convicted of misleading Congress and making false statements in connection with the Iran-Contra scandal. An appeals court later overturned the verdict because Congress had given him immunity for his testimony.
The retired vice admiral now heads the "Information Awareness Office" in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which gave us Internet and stealth aircraft technology.
Data-mining is his idea according to stories that first appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Computers and analysts could use this available information to determine patterns of people's behavior, detect and identify terrorists, decipher plans and presumably enable the United States to pre-empt terrorist acts.
"This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario," Times columnist William Safire, a veteran of the Nixon administration, opined. "It is what will happen if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks."
Privacy is not a partisan issue. It is a tough question: How much of a price is too much to pay in President Bush's war on terror?
That's a big question lurking deep in the fine print of the Homeland Security Act, a question that has received surprisingly little attention as it speeds on a fast track toward passage with President Bush's backing.
You could sort of understand how the USA Patriot Act zipped through Congress. It was right after the Sep 11 terrorist attacks. We, the public were in a panic and grieving deeply.
So we let Congress and President Bush hastily sign away more than a dozen privacy laws, expand the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and relax some requirements for government agents to report secret eavesdropping to Congress and the courts.
In an atmosphere of fear and tragedy, Americans surrendered some of their privacy rights and gave law enforcement officials more powers of surveillance, even if it might have been more powers than the government really needed. Make their jobs easier; goes the logic of such circumstances, and everyone will feel safer. Feeling safer is what security is all about.
But it is less easy to forgive "us," the public, the media and the rest of the chattering classes for refusing to pay attention as more and more of our privacy protections are sucked into the dark abyss of legislative fine print. That's what governments often itch to do, take more power than they need when nobody's looking-or when nobody much cares.
Most of media attention that the Homeland Security Act has received has been directed at the Republican-Democratic squabbles over Civil Service protections for government workers.
We in the media love such old-century partisan squabbles. They are easy to cover: Meanwhile, some of our most cherished liberties could go up in smoke like a discarded national-security file.
Government needs to have access to information about potential bad guys and gals, but there also should be limits. America's enduring form of government rests on a delicate system of checks and balances and oversight by one branch or agency over another.
Americans need to vigorously discuss and debate the new definitions of oversight that government officials want to have over our private lives.
It's easy to understand why government officials want these new powers. It is less easy to understand why the rest of us would surrender them without an argument.
Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial staff.