When I think about people who've seen our future, William Gibson comes to mind, and so does Philip K. Dick.

When Philip wrote A Scanner Darkly and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, he was envisioning a paranoid world in which we, as citizens, could never be sure who we were talking to or what their objectives were. Looking back over my archives I see I've tracked a number of child molestation and pornography cases, in which the individuals apprehended thought they were communicating with a child but in fact were conversing with someone intent on securing evidence of a crime.

While Dick focused on drug entrapment (the Berkeley of the '70s he lived in was rife with narcs), what's happening today is quite similar and like a lot of future predictions—1984, Farenheit 451—when you look back you see that, yes, we've actually gotten there, but in such incremental steps that we don't realize that this is what they were talking about.

According to Marty Klein, "the feds seem uninterested in distinguishing between adults trying to find children to have sex with, and adults who enjoy fantasizing about having sex with children." At first glance, this seems like a non-relevant distinction, but is it? Most of us have found at one time or another that the anonymity of communication offered by the Internet is a tremendously liberating experience. You can choose any identity you desire—age, gender, nationality, any persona you would like to adopt is yours for the taking. Are you dissatisfied with your life, or would you like a "do-over"? Suddenly, this option is available and we should think carefully about proposals like Microsoft's Palladium, since any kind of "embedded globally-unique identifier" on our data packets removes this transformative liberty in the cause of providing online security. I'm willing to accept a measure of danger in exchange for open-ended potential and I imagine you are as well.

A very Dick-ish scenario played out in this case, wherein Robert L. placed an ad in a swinger's magazine. We could have told him that wasn't wise, but it was his dime. He was contacted by a 13-year-old named "Pamela" who was in reality Detective Michael DiMatteo of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Dept. The fact that the authorities initiated the approach is rather troubling. A number of similar cases are detailed here.

If you don't know who you're talking to online, then you could be talking to anyone. If a child is pretending to be an adult and elicits intimate language from you, have you committed a crime? The current statutes in place are designed to prevent predation, but are blind to any other permutation of possible relationships that might form, and so a prudent paranoia about user identity is a sensible precaution to take with you on your Net ventures. People who fail to do that are winding up in prison and thus we've slid into Dick's vision sideways, ending up at the same destination by a slightly different route.

Are you willing to trade your dangerous freedom of identity for a safe unambiguous security?

10:16:10 PM       

That's how I'm reading all this. So what's happening this morning? Lots of Iraq coverage which is mostly jockeying around, but Rumsfeld's back in fine form, infuriating the French and Germans with this diplomatically adroit quip: "You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe." You couldn't make this stuff up. (Actually, Mark found a way at FGaQ.) Otherwise we're in "digest" mode as the national dialogue chews over everything on the table. We took particular notice of the following:

No Free Ride

If there's one thing our legislators are good at, it's collecting money. Keep an eye on the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, a group of legislators and tax honchos from more than 30 states meeting in Tampa today.

The two-day conference is led by a coalition that last fall approved a plan to make it easier for states to collect sales taxes on products sold over the Internet.

Now, maybe you've lost your job and your benefits are running out. See how they vote then. "Um..." (diddling with their ties) "we couldn't... oh my no..." Suddenly they go into Scrooge-mode bigtime.

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday rejected a Democratic attempt to again extend unemployment compensation for more than a million laid-off U.S. workers who have already exhausted all of their benefits.

Crackdown Backdown

We're really glad to see that the University of California at Berkeley thought twice and reversed its stance on censoring the fund-raising efforts of the Emma Goldman Papers Project.

In an e-mail sent to the campus community over the weekend, Berkeley Chancellor Bob Berdahl said the center can use whatever Goldman quotes it wants in the future.

The Length of the Chain

Another group of people having second thoughts are media ethicists (an underworked bunch) examining the case of Orlando television news producer Jennifer Hersey, who we mentioned yesterday as being instrumental in the bust of veteran Palm Beach County prosecutor Ira Karmelin, who thought Hersey was a 13-year-old and flashed his manly bits to her via Webcam.

What we didn't know at the time was that Hersey has done this before. In the late 1990s she ran some undercover stings in California that cost a lawyer, a teacher, and a psychiatrist their licenses and their jobs. That's not a problem per se, since nobody has any sympathy for these online douchebags, but the larger question concerns the role of a journalist acting in a law enforcement capacity. Here's ethicist Bob Steele:

"Journalists are in the business of both seeking the truth and publishing the truth. We should be honest in the way we seek the truth and publish our stories," he said. "We should not in any routine way be collaborative and cooperative with law enforcement agencies. If we are, we erode our watchdog roles."

Thinking Clearly

Let's step aside from our theme a bit and look at this letter, sent to BBC's Reader's Forum on the topic of "Iraq: Will war opposition make a difference?"

To all anti-war campaigners: we live in an evil world where extreme situations call for extreme measures. Be thankful for life and understand that life must be preserved for our future generations. Bottom line: If the neglect of action now causes one of your loved ones their life in the not so distant future, would that finally open your eyes? If we do not take care of these evils now, our children will suffer the agony later.
Robert Barnes, USA

To all anti-war campaigners...
Far too beligerant. Whatever follows is going to be Jingo City.

we live in an evil world...
Way too simplistic. We live in a complex world.

extreme situations call for extreme measures...
This is like those "three-strikes" laws, a reflexive response bereft of logical thought.

our future generations...our children...
This is Dr. Laura logic, emotional appeals intermixed with power-English in a befuddled mishmash of bellicose flim-flammery. It's the product of a frat-house lout with a bad haircut who's been worshiping at the altar of right-wing radio. What frightens me the most is that this looks like the sort of thing our President might say off the cuff.

11:33:18 AM