WHEN I was very young I remember a movie called “See Here, Private Hargrove.” It was a light comedy about a recruit’s early experiences in the Army. The one thing I remember, clearly (but maybe incorrectly) was that the Private was quite annoying to his sergeant because he (Hargrove) had an extreme memory, and had memorized Army regulations. Thus he corrected his sergeant, a lot, and was right, all the time. What impressed me was that anyone could remember so much, and recall it so quickly. He was an impressive human, but one that we would seldom, if ever, find anywhere. The movie was apparently not that impressive as it, and its sequel, is also not found anywhere as it is seldom shown.
My point is this. No matter how much data there is on a particular subject ultimately a human being has to analyze them in order to act. Even the officers who wrote the Army regulations could not remember all that they wrote. I recall myself being surprised (pleasantly) when a girlfriend quoted a line I written in a play, and which I had failed to recognize. And it was an important line, and an important play. I am human, and not a Hargrove.
These days there seems to be a mild uproar (if such a thing is possible) regarding the potential loss of privacy. This comes from the “fact” (is it?) that the government, Google, your credit card company, etc, are all “monitoring” you. The Feds, apparently, have assigned many agents to check emails. A long time ago “60 Minutes” confirmed that some super duper computers, used by the National Security Agency, were monitoring phone calls in the US. I do not know if this is true, or even possible, or if ti were simply a case of a network being used for propaganda purposes by a government.
Let me indulge these easily frightened people, and assume that such violations of privacy ARE happening, all the time. So what? In order for any action to be taken on your information, some human has to read your private stuff and then… yes, and then what? He needs to talk to a superior, who will talk to his superior, who then will decide to assign agents to your case to… yes, to do what? Will they sit outside your home, in black SUV’s (as one lunatic member of the Tea Party told me), for days? Will they assign some living human being to listen to every phone call you make, and read every email you send or receive? These people “work” (sic) 8-hour shifts. This means that they would need 7 agents for full coverage, 24 hours per day, seven days per week.
Do the math. In order to cover the population of the USA seven-eights of it would have be watching the other eight. That is, almost all of us would have to be working for spy organizations. Trust me on this---these people work like YOU. Do NOT judge them by TV or Hollywood. They are not feverishly dedicated to finding evidence. They work, if at all, only when the boss is present. They goof off for about 6 hours a day. They do not read the reports that pile up on their desk, but simply pass them onward. They do not take the job home with them, or when on vacation. They are inefficient, indifferent, and lazy. They are not interested in you---even if you are a terrorist, as it requires work to catch one. Relax…. this is what they are doing.
Our only real danger is if this monitoring stuff is outsourced to non-Americans in the Third World, where people still work. Then we are all in trouble.
You may also reading a “literary blog” by the same author. Please visit wildeandtwain.blogspot.com.
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