<a href="062">062</a>    [ 063 ]    <a href="064">064</a>that all the strangers were friends, in some sense. > Where u located? The character who wound me up was called Lizanator, and it was female, though that didn't mean that it was a girl. Guys had some weird affinity for playing female characters. > San Francisco I said. > No stupe, where you located in San Fran? > Why, you a pervert? That usually shut down that line of conversation. Of course every gamespace was full of pedos and pervs, and cops pretending to be pedo- and perv-bait (though I sure hoped there weren't any cops on the Xnet!). An accusation like that was enough to change the subject nine out of ten times. > Mission? Potrero Hill? Noe? East Bay? > Just wind me up k thx? She stopped winding. > You scared? > Safe -- why do you care? > Just curious I was getting a bad vibe off her. She was clearly more than just curious. Call it paranoia. I logged off and shut down my Xbox. # Dad looked at me over the table the next morning and said, "It looks like it's going to get better, at least." He handed me a copy of the *Chronicle* open to the third page. > A Department of Homeland Security spokesman has confirmed that the San Francisco office has requested a 300 percent budget and personnel increase from DC What? > Major General Graeme Sutherland, the commanding officer for Northern California DHS operations, confirmed the request at a press conference yesterday, noting that a spike in suspicious activity in the Bay Area prompted the request. "We are tracking a spike in underground chatter and activity and believe that saboteurs are deliberately manufacturing false security alerts to undermine our efforts." My eyes crossed. No freaking way. > "These false alarms are potentially 'radar chaff' intended to disguise real attacks. The only effective way of combatting them is to step up staffing and analyst levels so that we can fully investigate every lead." > Sutherland noted the delays experienced all over the city were "unfortunate" and committed to eliminating them. I had a vision of the city with four or five times as many DHS enforcers, brought in to make up for my own stupid ideas. Van was right. The more I fought them, the worse it was going to get. Dad pointed at the paper. "These guys may be fools, but they're methodical fools. They'll just keep throwing resources at this problem until they solve it. It's tractable, you know. Mining all the data in the city, following up on every lead. They'll catch the terrorists." I lost it. "Dad! Are you *listening to yourself*? They're talking about investigating practically every person in the city of San Francisco!" "Yeah," he said, "that's right. They'll catch every alimony cheat, every dope dealer, every dirt-bag and every terrorist. You just wait. This could be the best thing that ever happened to this country." "Tell me you're joking," I said. "I beg you. You think that that's what they intended when they wrote the Constitution? What about the Bill of Rights?" "The
Bill of Rights was written before data-mining," he said. He was awesomely serene, convinced of his rightness. "The right to freedom of association is fine, but why shouldn't the cops be allowed to mine your social network to figure out if you're hanging out with gangbangers and terrorists?" "Because it's an invasion of my privacy!" I said. "What's the big deal? Would you rather have privacy or terrorists?" Agh. I hated arguing with my dad like this. I needed a coffee. "Dad, come on. Taking away our privacy isn't catching terrorists: it's just inconveniencing normal people." "How do you know it's not catching terrorists?" "Where are the terrorists they've caught?" "I'm sure we'll see arrests in good time. You just wait." "Dad, what the hell has happened to you since last night? You were ready to go nuclear on the cops for pulling you over --" "Don't use that tone with me, Marcus. What's happened since last night is that
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