Slouching Towards Brazil

10:30 PM Feb 12, 2006

“The personal life of every individual is based on secrecy, and perhaps it is partly for that reason that civilized man is so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.” -Anton Chekhov

That gossamer illusion of privacy we hold so tight and scrutinize so unwillingly suffered a chill wind from the desert of the real this week. This past Thursday, Google announced a desktop search "feature" which transmits contents of your hard drive to the "don't be evil" folks. That same day, the Christian Science Monitor reported on a massive cyberspace data-mining operation (directed at whom?) reassuringly named ADVISE

All this on the heels of A.G. Alberto Gonzales' novel constitutional interpretations last Monday. Such old-fashioned invasiveness as "airplane-like" security on New York commuter trains seems positively quaint.

Terry Gilliam's dystopian masterpiece Brazil had its general release Feb. 14, 1986. Celebrate its 20th anniversary this week by giving the data-mining algorithms at Blockbuster or Netflix something to alert the authorities about.

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