EDITORIAL

Quis custodiet ...?

There will be references to some aspects of the Watergate scandal in this editorial, and if that's going to be too much for you to bear, then perhaps you'd better wait until next month. We'll talk about astronomy and cosmology then. Simple things.

At the moment this is being written, there are vast clouds of confusion and mystery hanging over the Senate Watergate hearings. I have no intention of pointing fingers, making accusations, supporting one side or the other. Due process of law should prevail, and neither newspaper accounts, television analyses, nor magazine editorials are going to get to the bottom of the Watergate problem. In this democracy, a man is innocent until proven guilty. So be it.

The aspect of the Watergate affair that fascinates me is a little-noticed quote from an official of the National Science Foundation. With reporters uncovering wider and wider connections all through the government, more and more agencies involved either in the original break-in or the subsequent cover-up, one newsman asked this NSF scientist if the National Science Foundation had anything to do with Watergate.

The scientist blanched at the thought, but then added: "If we had anything to do with it, do you think they would've used those Stone Age electronics?"

The technology of electronics has reached a point that makes the latest James Bond movies look amateurish. It's now possible, in theory at least, to point a laser at a window across the street and detect the vibrations in the window caused by people speaking inside the room. The vibrations, recorded eloctronically, can then be deciphered and the original talk reconstructed. Bugging without bugs!

The history of Western civilization has been a constant dynamic tension between the needs of the community-tribe, fief, barony, national state-and the rights of the individual. The American Revolution began as a celebration of the ascendency of individual human rights over the demands of the state. The Constitution was a definite step in the other direction, and many patriots—including the fiery Patrick Henry—called the Constitution a sellout to the monied class of property owners. In fact, the Constitution was finally ratified and put into effect only after the Bill of Rights was promised as a series of amendments.

Technology has played a curious role in the tension between state and individual.

Gunpowder and cannon made it possible for kings to overpower knightly barons and set up modern nation-states. That Renaissance type of technology—and the new techniques for amassing and handling money—allowed kings to bring together armies that were too strong for the armored barons to fight in the field, and too heavy in firepower to withstand in their castles. Before gunpowder, a king was merely one baron among many, owed a traditional allegiance by his peers. With cannon and hired troops, kings became true rulers of nation-states, and the rest of the aristocracy slowly but inevitably became courtiers.

It took centuries for the gunpowder technology to become simple and reliable and well-understood enough to trickle down into the hands of the common man. When it did, there was revolution. Not that there hadn't been revolts before. But with muskets in their hands, the yeoman farmers, or peasants, or city riffraff, could become successful revolutionaries.

The new technology of deep-ocean sailing allowed Europeans to settle the Americas. That in itself was a contribution from technology to individual freedom. The mature technology of musketry allowed the colonists to battle professional armies on a nearly-equal footing. George Washington's ragged army lost most of its battles, true. But it won the war. If the Redcoats had muskets and the colonials had nothing but crossbows, it might have been a very different outcome.

Across the ocean, in France, not only did city mobs topple the old order, but hastily-assembled armies led by very young officers, for the most part, stood off the finest professional armies of Europe, as the other kings tried to restore their deposed Bourbon cousins. Again, it was the fact that kings no longer had a monopoly on firepower that allowed the French citizen-armies to hold their own.

We've all seen countless Western movies in which the Good Guys scowl at the thought of someone giving rifles to the Indians. It wasn't all that simple in real life, but Custer's last words might well have been not, "Too many gol-darned Injuns," but, "Too many Injuns with rifles." Repeating rifles, at that.

Much the same problem has haunted our military engagement in Southeast Asia. (Where the enemy has often been called Indian; partly, I think, out of respect.)

Back in the mid-1960's, when our heavy military commitment in Vietnam began, most Americans were confident that our powerful, modern, well-equipped army could make quick work of the "simple villagers and peasants" on the other side. Turned out the peasants had automatic rifles that worked better than ours, transistor radios, very effective mortars, even rocket-assisted mortars, plus other technological goodies. By using these weapons in harmony with the geography and social environment of Southeast Asia, and under a home-grown tactical discipline that was ideally suited for that environment, the simple peasants held their own.

And, of course, in the air war the North Vietnamese had the use of quite modern antiaircraft defenses.

Southeast Asia has shown that relatively unsophisticated people can quickly adapt to the use of modern weaponry and face a strong, professional army on a less-than-hopeless basis.

The terrorism spreading from the Mideast shows that modern technology can be used to attack the very fabric of society. The Israelis have been quite convincing in their displays of military strength. Using every technological advantage they could muster, they have repeatedly defeated Arab armies that had modern weaponry but antique leadership.

However, a technology capable of producing cheap plastic explosives and expensive commercial jet airliners has proven to be a volatile mix. The military battles in the Mideast have not been decisive, partly because it's possible to carry on a paramilitary war of terror by smuggling frightfully lethal weapons onto frighteningly fragile airliners.

Getting back to the United States, the tension between individual rights and the requirements of the state reached a peak of violence in the 1960's and early '70's. Although several prominent government officials apparently believed that there was a conspiracy afoot—possibly Communist-inspired and supported—the evidence seems to indicate that there wasn't a national protest movement, per se, but rather lots of different groups of people, with different aims and intensities of feeling, who were protesting many things: the Southeast Asia war, racial injustice, the draft, governmental high-handedness, police brutality, drug laws, et cetera.

Modern technology helped to make these protests highly effective. Television gave even the tiniest knots of sign-wielding protesters instant national publicity. Telephones and automobiles and jet airliners gave protesters easy nationwide communications.

And, for the more bloody-minded (or perhaps mindless) of them, weapons technology gave them explosives and guns. The tactics of terrorism seemed to work elsewhere, and they were tried here.

There were bombings, and bomb threats. There were scares, real and imaginary. Set against a background of airliner highjackings, assassinations of political figures, and riots, the increasing scale of violence apparently alarmed many government officials so much that they declared a sort of war on all protest movements and protesters.

It was largely a secret war, and the evidence indicates that it had highly political overtones. Partisan political, that is.

An important part of that battle was the use of electronic technology for intelligence-gathering and surveillance purposes.

The chances are better than even that your fingerprints are on file with the FBI. And somewhere in the government apparatus there's certainly a dossier on you—at the Internal Revenue Service, if nowhere else. It is possible that your phone has been bugged, either by the telephone company itself, or some governmental agency, on a routine check.

Of what? Is it really necessary to poke into a citizen's private life? Is it vital to the national security? Are we so threatened by aggressors beyond our borders or traitors within our midst that we must live under constant suspicion? I believe not. I don't think there is any nation or combination of nations that could conquer this country of ours. Destroy us, yes; with nuclear missiles or bacterial agents. But that is a threat that every human being on this planet faces, for our retaliation against such a doomsday attack would be swift and certain and devastating.

Neither do I believe that protest against the government, even violent protest, is much of a threat to our way of life. Our political system is built around the right to protest, along peaceful lines. The violence and excesses of groups such as the Weathermen turned off most Americans, turned the majority of our citizens against the perpetrators of the violence and the causes they espoused. The protest movement—or movements, plural, really—have accomplished many things. Our military involvement in Southeast Asia is almost at an end. The draft has been abolished. The tide of racial equality is rising for millions of Blacks, Chicanos, Indians . . . and even women. It wasn't the violence that accomplished these things. It was the decision by most Americans that the protesters had some right on their side, that the goals they sought were both legitimate and desirable.

But because of the widespread protest, and the government's self-defensive measures against it, the art of electronic snooping became a prime tool not only of government agencies, but of some industrial organizations as well.

The state-of-the-art of electronics technology is such, right now, that governmental or industrial agencies can spy on the average citizen very easily. Without his knowing it. That technology has not yet reached the point of simplicity and easy access where the average citizen can protect himself against such illegal spying.

And what does the future hold?

Remember the NSF man's quote. The Watergate bugging used "Stone Age electronics." It is possible for much subtler and more sophisticated surveillance and snooping to be perpetrated. For all we know, it's going on right now.

Not because there are inherently evil men in places of power. Merely because of a kind of law of physics: if there's a new tool around, somebody will use it.

Modern technology has produced computers, miniature communications devices, so-called truth drugs. Modern science has come up with psychological and medical knowledge that is being used in many interrogations of prisoners, all over the world, to ferret out information that old-style torture couldn't pry loose.

This is new science and rather new technology. It's expensive, and so far it's the exclusive property of the powerful people among us: governmental agencies and large industrial concerns.

In time, this technology will filter down to the level of the common man, and—just as the Minutemen , became the equals of the Redcoats in firepower—the average citizen will be able to protect himself against bugging, and very persuasive interrogation.

Until then, we have a situation that many science-fiction writers have warned against for decades: the world of "1984" is not only possible today, it's already happening.

If our elected officials and the leaders of business and industry are not protecting the rights of the individual, then who will? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will watch the watchmen?

THE EDITOR