The black helicopter crowd

There’s a big dust-up right now about the government’s increasing efforts to track the habits and practices of seemingly ordinary Americans.   It’s monitoring our phone calls to determine who we’re calling, when and from where.  It’s checking our e-mails and online activities.  It’s even data mining our credit-card transactions and credit reports, among other things. 

All in the name of national security. 

This is upsetting a great number of people.  They think it’s unprecedented.  Some think the fabled black helicopters are coming right behind this.  

Me, not so much.

I’m more offended that the government is squandering so much money and other resources to duplicate what already exists, while ignoring the obvious. 

Those of us in the business know that marketers already have most of this data on ordinary citizens.  So why waste taxpayer money on costly, built-from-scratch Big Brother programs when you could buy the same data a lot cheaper on the open market? 

Sure, market data can’t tell you that so-and-so is planting a bomb at the corner of 12^th and Market this coming Thursday in the name of some obscure cause, but it can certainly narrow down the field of potential terrorists dramatically. 

Perhaps to a more manageable number than – say – 340 million people? 

I’m guessing here, but if the Feds ruled out everybody who couldn’t possibly fit a terrorist profile – like 80-year-old grandmothers who belong to the DAR and subscribe to Cat Fancy magazine, and 50-year-old men who buy suits at Brooks Brothers with their American Express Gold Card – they could get that number down big time. 

Okay, I’m being somewhat – and only somewhat – facetious, but there’s a better answer. 

There’s no need to get up in the business of every American – almost all of us are not potential terrorists, and everyone knows this.  The Feds simply need to focus on the much, much smaller number of more likely candidates.

They need to toss political correctness aside and be upfront on who is more likely to be or become a terrorist.  First cut should include people who come from places that grow terrorists.  Non-citizens like students who overstay their visas should be under a magnifying glass.  Folks who send and receive money orders to and from terrorist hotbeds deserve more scrutiny as well.   

Oh, and we might want to listen to advice from foreign intelligence services as well.  Duh. 

This would cut the potential terrorist pool down to size.  Yes, there would be cries of outrage from Muslims now in this country but originally from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Chechnya, Iraq, Iran, Syria and other regions where Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and radical Islamists hold sway.  Muslims from those places trying to visit America or enroll with student visas would be equally offended. 

We’ll be accused of racial profiling.  Which would be true.      

So we should say yes, that’s precisely what we’re doing.  No apologies. 

Maybe if terrorists thought we were profiling effectively they’d back off a bit.  Getting caught at customs or while trying to board a flight doesn’t have the martyr prestige of a suicide bombing.  It’s about as dramatic as getting caught with a 4 oz. shampoo in your carry-on bag.  It’s not making the evening news. 

Look, we all know the underwear bomber, 911 perpetrators and Boston Marathon bombers were not Sephardic Jews.  They weren’t Pentecostal Swedes.  They weren’t Irish Catholics.  They weren’t German Protestants, nor were they Hindus, Buddhists or Mormons.     

They all did have something in common, however.  They were all radicalized Muslims.  And they all came from, or trained in, one of the areas I mentioned earlier for extra scrutiny. 

That’s not to say all Muslims in America and abroad want to kill us.  Yet the propensity to be or become a terrorist is significantly higher among certain Muslims from certain areas.  We all need to recognize the obvious and stop pretending all Muslims everywhere mean us no harm.   

A bunch of them want to see America destroyed.  They want to see our ally and proxy in the Middle East – Israel – destroyed.  They hate us, our culture, our freedoms, and our tolerance, and think we are weak and vulnerable because we turn a blind eye toward them in the name of political correctness. 

In fact, they think we’re stupid.  Candidly, the way we go about trying to find them is stupid. 

We’d rather look at everybody in this country, compile unfathomable quantities of data, and spend billions in the name of national security rather than concentrating on the most obvious suspects.

Just a suggestion to the Feds, mind you.  A teensy more targeting efficiency on the front end could save a lot of time and money.

That’s if all this snooping and spying on our citizens is really about national security and preventing terrorist attacks, and not, as the black-helicopter crowd believes, a massive government plot to gather data on every American for some nefarious purpose.

And what purpose would that be?  Granted, it’s unnerving to think that the government is watching your every move, but so is viewing curtains on Target’s site and then suddenly seeing pop-up ads for Target’s curtains on other sites you visit.  That’s not a coincidence; that’s near instantaneous use of your viewing data by Target to follow you wherever you surf.    

The credit card companies you deal with have been doing intense data mining on all their customers’ transactions for years.  Didn’t you ever wonder how their fraud-protection programs work?  They know the types of things you routinely buy with their card and where already; when something out of the ordinary pops up, an algorithm is triggered resulting in a phone call to you.   

As far as searching your e-mails and what you post online, do you think this isn’t happening already by Google, Facebook, and other social media sites?  Your life online is no secret to them or to big online retailers like Amazon, Staples, Best Buy or Walmart.   Verizon, Comcast and other ISPs have records of all the sites you visit, what you download and view, and how often.  If you have cable at home, they also know what you’re watching.

So in terms of protecting your privacy, that ship has sailed.  Your life is pretty much an open book to marketers. 

That’s because marketers are smart and know how to gather and use data with a clear purpose in mind.  They profile all the time with nary a thought to political correctness.  They use all your data to more efficiently predict your behavior and preferences.  They’ve got teams of brilliant people creating programs designed to do that better and better all the time.    

Our government is not nearly as smart.  To be kind, our government is not a repository of the best and the brightest minds our country has to offer.   That’s not because it doesn’t pay well, but because the best and brightest prefer not to work with dunderheads, political hacks, and insular bureaucrats more focused on kissing ass to retain their positions than doing a good job.

Our government doesn’t function very efficiently either – the proverbial left hand usually has no clue what the right hand is doing.  All the alphabet agencies tasked with homeland security, law enforcement, counter terrorism and intelligence might as well be feudal fiefdoms widely separated by culture and language. 

Do you really think our government is competent and coordinated enough to make some practical use of all the data we presume they are gathering?

Personally, I don’t think so. 

After all, it took the Feds 16 years to find Whitey Bulger.  You remember Whitey, the Boston mob guy.  He was finally found, living in Santa Monica, California with his long-time girlfriend, after being on the FBI’s America’s Most Wanted list for all those years.  That’s right, 16 years. 

It wasn’t the crack investigative efforts of the FBI or another government agency that finally caught Whitey, but some neighbors who recognized Whitey and his girlfriend’s pictures.     

That’s how this stuff usually happens.  We get lucky.  Somebody somewhere sees something that seems fishy and reports it.  The trouble is, our government’s usually not smart enough to know what to do with the information.

Like when a bunch of Arabic males sign up for flight lessons and want to practice with a commercial jet simulator.  Nothing suspicious there, right?  Or when a foreign country warns us about a specific individual they suspect of having ties to terrorists.  Obviously, just their opinion.    

So what exactly are the Feds looking for among all our data?  E-mails with “Death to America!” in them?  Jihadist affinity groups on Facebook?  Online purchases of suicide vests?   

Seriously, if the Feds believe terrorists are that stupid, then just use the free Google Street View; the terrorists may have a sign out front advertising their next attack.  

Do I think what the government is doing is invasive and uncalled for?  Why yes I do.  The thought of some dimwit government hack going through your virtual sock and underwear drawer is creepy. 

Do I lose sleep at night wondering what they’re really up to? 

No I don’t.  Because I don’t think they actually know what to do with all that data, much less have a purpose beyond appearing to “be doing something” about national security.

And if they’re doing this to spot terrorists and foil plots against us, as they claim, they’re wasting their time and looking in all the wrong places. 

The overwhelming majority of Americans – I’d hazard to say at least 99.99% of all American citizens– are not the enemy.  The Feds would do better to focus on other more likely prospects.

We know who they are.  So do the Feds. 

Stop annoying us.  

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