WATCH THE WATCHERS

PORTLAND, ORE. - Almost every week, I see new evidence that our country is
gradually turning into a "global village." Gone are the days when people
could move to a big city and become unidentified bystanders on crowded
sidewalks. For better or worse, we are losing opportunities to exist
anonymously.

Once again, history comes full circle.

In earlier times, residents of small towns maintained networks of community
surveillance to keep track of outsiders, or neighbors who aroused suspicion.

Advanced technology is now putting more and more of us under the same
pervasive scrutiny whenever we step out the front door.

Juanita Lozano knows what I mean. Last month she was sentenced to a year in
jail for mailing secret Republican debate material to the Al Gore campaign
and then lying about it to a grand jury. Crucial evidence was provided by a
post office security camera that caught her on tape as she mailed the
package in question.

It's hard to walk around the block these days without having your face
recorded and stored in some electronic archive.

There are videocams in grocery stores, schools, banks, airports, and
numerous other venues.

If this situation was an episode of "Star Trek," Captain Kirk would
probably conclude that our planet had been colonized by Alan Funt and the
staff of "Candid Camera." A news story in early July reported that Tampa,
Fla., has become the first American city to scan public streets, looking
for people with outstanding arrest warrants.

Anyone who manages to avoid detection by earthbound lenses still has to
contend with more sophisticated devices such as the IKONOS satellite
lurking 400 miles overhead.

I was impressed by its high-resolution photos of the EP-3 Navy airplane on
Hainan Island, and it was also used recently to uncover other vital
information: the secret African location of "Survivor III." CBS had been
trying to keep the site in Kenya under wraps in order to maximize viewer
interest before the show's airing in October. I dread the day when IKONOS
starts sending pictures of my backyard to the city weed-control bureau.

Sometimes, people hiding secrets get ambushed by unexpected adversaries.
Private detectives hired by suspicious Little League coaches were unable to
learn the true age of pitching sensation Danny Almonte, but Sports
Illustrated cracked the case faster than you can say "Dick Tracy." Who
would have guessed the scribes were also super sleuths?

If the Bush administration acted quickly to form a public-private
partnership and link the investigative powers of Sports Illustrated with
the technical resources of the CIA, I think Osama bin Laden would be under
arrest in time to watch the World Series from his jail cell.

While it's true that a lot of privacy-busting is aimed at criminals, many
Americans are alarmed by our society's increasing powers of observation.
What we need to do is make sure we're keeping a watchful eye on the
watchers at all times.

And that shouldn't be too hard, since we've gotten so good at keeping our
eyes on just about everything else.