Five years ago Bangladeshi-born Hasan Elahi, a 35-year old artist and Rutgers professor, was detained at the Detroit airport by the FBI on suspicion of stockpiling explosives in a Florida storage facility. He was released when they were convinced they had the wrong guy but it landed him on the US terrorist watch list. A list that's apparently very difficult to get your name taken off of.
In response, Elahi started a website where he posts his location via a GPS he wears, a feed of his credit card transactions and, since he travels frequently, photos of every meal he's about to eat on an airplane. He also calls the FBI before every trip so they can alert their field offices. He hasn't been detained again.
Elahi says by flooding the market with information about himself, he deters overly ambitious agents from getting the details wrong in their snooping. He says with the younger generation, like his students, posting their personal photos on Flickr and writing journals on MySpace, Big Brother just might go out of business.
So last night, I had a dream that I was detained by a group of Scientologists. They told me that they had my friend's newborn daughter and unless I cooperated with them, they would not give her back. I got to see her for a moment. She was tiny like a Barbie doll and she was attached to a piece of cardboard with twisties like a doll when you buy it. I touched her little hands and started crying.
(I guess that the reason they had this particular friend's daughter is because she has a celebrity blog and doesn't say very positive things about the Scientologists. It's rumored that Scientology has maintained such a high profile list of followers by taking advantage of actors, desperate for success, and leeching their darkest secrets from them.)
They had my journals from high school and knew everything about me. They never harmed me physically but wore me down in questioning. They made me feel weak and vulnerable and then came in like my protector. "If you join us, we can protect you."
This is how Homeland Security works. Without their snooping, our cities might be bombed by terrorists every day. We don't know for sure, but we're scared and worn out, so we give in. At one point during the interrogation, I started hitting and punching the woman who was questioning me. She didn't react at all. She was like an android without any feelings. They continued to name the people I cared about that they had access to if I resisted. The dream ended with me saying "I want my life back. I want my job and my friends and my apartment and my boyfriend. I want my freedom back. I want the choice to say no to you" and I woke up sobbing.
I immediately thought about the Wired article. See, when I went to bed I thought "right on, good for you!" to Elahi taking charge of his life and refusing to be a victim. It could be his site that has kept him out of Guantanamo. But this morning I had a different view. I wasn't harmed in my dream but I clearly felt that my freedom had been taken from me. I realized that even things like the job I don't have anymore represent choices that I have, choices that I often take for granted. And I wondered, is this trend of total exposure and radical transparency really a victory?
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