I just read Safire's "You are a suspect" in which he describes the dark side of the Homeland Security Act. If you're not a cookied NYT reader you can view the article here too.
The idea of building a "grand database" that ties together...
every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend
...is so "grand" it seems to me impossible. But then again DoubleClick got in trouble for wanting to do this sort of thing a while back...now the government is looking for the go ahead. Somehow it all seems wrong.
If it passes (and I hope it doesn't) I wonder if they will use Perl...
