Grendel’s Kitchen

With Surveillance, You’re Never AloneThe Augusta Chronicle, January 04, 2006by Rosabeth Moss Kanter To make this New Year’s greeting special, I am writing it in the total privacy of my office, with the door closed. You are the very first person to read this. That is, except for the FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, EOP and Big Brother. Also the IT department controlling my server, Microsoft sending pop-up “install update” messages, and my husband, whose “Go to My PC” program can get into my laptop.Isn’t it nice to never feel alone? I swear to the spy organizations monitoring international e-mail that my 3 a.m. e- mails to foreigners are perfectly benign. People in foreign countries are the only ones awake if insomnia strikes.Seriously, 2005 has been a banner year for the Watchbirds watching us. It was not enough for Americans to be strip-searched at airports, with outer garments and shoes coming off before pat- downs. Now we’ve been told that we’re subject to constant surveillance.Is this the America we want?With the Supreme Court so much on President Bush’s mind, it’s ironic that his administration forgets all those other courts, the ones supposed to issue warrants before spying on citizens.Bush counters that he is trying to protect us from terrorism. Does anyone feel safer because of unfettered electronic surveillance? In my July column, written in England after the subway bombings, I stressed the importance of maintaining the distinction between terrorism and protest. That line can be too easily erased when there are no checks on the power of the presidency. That goes for torture (another appalling revelation of 2005) as well as trampling on other civil liberties.I am equally concerned about any public official abusing the power of office to shut down protest. John Whitehead, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, wrote in The Wall Street Journal recently that New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer made threats to him after Whitehead’s earlier WSJ column arguing that AIG chairman Hank Greenberg, a Spitzer target, should be considered innocent until proven guilty. I know John Whitehead personally; he is a model of rectitude who is anything but inflammatory. Gubernatorial candidate Spitzer should watch his tongue and his actions.Bush counters that he is trying to protect us from terrorism. Does anyone feel safer?In many ways, 2005 was a gloomy year, and not just for freedom. Many storm clouds hovered, literally as well as figuratively. Some clouds burst into destructive rains that caused not only the Katrina disasters in the Gulf but mini-floods that wrecked lives elsewhere.But cheer up! Since this is a New Year’s greeting, there are silver linings among those clouds. Appropriately, silver linings are found in mirrors. Mirrors force us to look at ourselves. Mirrors of accountability in the courts and the media expose excesses.A big 2005 Silver Lining Award goes to federal Judge John E. Jones III, an independent-minded Republican, who exposed intelligent design for what it is: disguised religion (he called it “inane”). Another goes to those courageous journalists who bring abuses out of the basement and expose them to the light of day. Throughout American history, the media have protected American liberties against demagogues bent on persecuting citizens. I recommend George Clooney’s gripping film, Good Night, and Good Luck, about how Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly of CBS News turned the tide against McCarthyism in the 1950s.May these examples remind us that even the worst trends can be reversed if we continue to discuss, expose and act. Take this thought into the new year, from Heaven’s Prisoner, a 1988 novel by James Lee Burke, set in Louisiana - a fitting place for a post- Katrina greeting: “Perhaps age has taught me that the earth is still new, molten at the core and still forming, that black leaves in the winter forest will crawl with life in the spring, that our story is ongoing, and it is indeed a crime to allow the heart’s energies to dissipate with the fading of light on the horizon.”The days are short now; the light sometimes appears to fade altogether. But America’s story is ongoing. Stay tuned for the 2006 episodes, which could take us in a better direction if we demand it. Privately and publicly.(Editor’s note: The writer is a Harvard Business School professor. She wrote this for The Miami Herald.)