In a marvellous display of ignorance (explained to me by a coworker who is a Russian expatriate), one of the Russian translations of "Homeland Security" is "KGB." For brevity's sake, the Act and the Unconstitutional, immoral Federal offices it creates will hereafter be referred to as "the American KGB."

Under the KGB, Americans no longer have ANY Constitutional guarantees. NONE. Not that this comes as a surprise to anyone who's been paying even the slightest bit of attention to American political discourse over the last century. Federal officials have been in the process of murdering the Constitutional Republic since the Lincoln Administration. The American KGB simply pounds the final nail into its coffin, creating the de facto police state about which politicians have always dreamed.

What the American KGB proves -- beyond a shadow of a doubt -- is that we can no longer depend on government to safeguard our liberties. With the passage of this Act, it becomes clear that government is the primary VIOLATOR of our liberties.

We can no longer believe that government will help us out of this mess. Government is the mess.

One of the central tenets of the American KGB is the creation of the "Total Information Awareness" (TIA) program. Masterminded by the aptly-named criminal John Poindexter, TIA will be a vast, centralized government database that will monitor the actions of every man, woman, and child in America from cradle to grave.

The American KGB will monitor all your financial transactions: credit card and white market cash purchases, ATM transactions, cash withdrawls or deposits, checking account transactions, investments, IRAs, etc. It will monitor your medical data, your travel habits, your Internet usage, and your phone calls. It will monitor what books and magazines you read. It will monitor and store your private and business correspondence.

Particular attention will be focused on your defense choices, making the TIA program a de facto Federal gun registration database. The hobby of reloading is essentially over, as the American KGB establishes new rules for "explosive" purchases that will make it illegal for reloaders to obtain the necessary chemicals without a Federal license.

Is there be any doubt that the Republicans are just as dedicated to victim disarmament as the Democrats? In the name of "fighting terrorism" a Republican administration has single-handedly guaranteed more innocent deaths via "gun control" than every Democrat in the collective history of the nation. This in the face of the irrefutable fact that September 11 would not have been possible had the individuals aboard the hijacked aircraft not been Unconstitutionally prohibited from exercising their natural right to self-defense.

Once more, the Republicans prove that America doesn't have two political parties, but rather identical political cousins played by Patty Duke.

TIA is the "permanent record" that your gradeschool principle always threatened you about. That it is unspeakably evil is obvious.

Contrary to what most individuals believe, the FedGov does not presently have the technology to track this kind of information. As a computer nerd employed by a major credit card issuer, I can categorically state that neither my company nor any other financial institution is currently sending customer records to the FedGov. Similarly, your doctor, travel agent or airline, magazine, library, and ISP are not presently mirroring this information to the FedGov.

This means that all of the TIA systems -- both those in the FedGov and those that providers will use to send the data -- must be be constructed. This process, even using private-sector talent (invariably several orders of magnitude superior to that available to government) will take years.

This is where the FedGov has made its critical mistake in the attempt to create a police state. The systems won't just magically appear, they'll be CONSTRUCTED. Nor will they be constructed by laymen using Microsoft Excel, but by professionals.

Our hope now lies in the individual. It lies in a place that should leave any government toady quaking in his boots:

Our hope now rests on the nerds.

Understand, please, that I intend no malice when I use the word "nerd." I myself am an Information Security professional, one of only two holders of the coveted "CISSP" certification in the state of South Dakota. I've PROUDLY been a nerd since 1979, when my father bought his first computer for his business.

The TIA systems will be built by the nerds. WE control information systems and the Internet, not some Federal agency. This evil abomination of a law is only possible if we nerds cooperate in creating it.

Do you hear me, President Bush, Senator Daschle, and Congressman Thune? WE control these things, not YOU. Your systems exist SOLELY because we choose to cooperate.

It's now time for you to learn the truth of that statement. It's time for we nerds to become the front-line warriors in the cause of individual liberty.

My friends, fellow nerds, we must refuse to cooperate.

If you work for a bank, as I do, when your employer assigns you the task of creating the system to mirror customer data to the FedGov, you must refuse.

If you work for an ISP, and are ordered to track and mirror Internet traffic and e-mail to the FedGov, you must refuse.

If you work for a travel agency, magazine, or library and are ordered to mirror information to the FedGov, you must refuse.

If you work for a gun store (or other retail store) and create the systems used to track customer purchases, you must refuse.

If you work for the FedGov and are ordered to create the systems to house the data sent to you, you must refuse.

Understand the consequences of non-compliance, potentially far more deadly than at any time in American history:

Under the American KGB, any refusal to cooperate in the hideously evil TIA program will brand us as terrorists under Federal law. We will therefore no longer be subject to normal proceedings, such as an attorney or trial. We will be termed "enemy combatants," meaning that the American KGB may do anything they like to us.

Many of us will lose our lives and fortunes. When my employer is ordered by regulatory agencies to comply with FedGov edicts, failure risks the end of his business. He will therefore want to fire me when I refuse to cooperate.

It may be that the KGB will want to make an example of me. They may whisk me away in the dead of night (as is common practice for gun owners, individuals with unusual religious practices, drug users, prostitutes, and other persons whose "crimes" harm no one but themselves). They may wish to beat me into submission and make me recant my words. They may simply take me out and shoot me. Under the American KGB, there are no pesky Constitutional guarantees to get in the way.

If they don't do it to me, no doubt one of my fellow nerds reading this column will become such a victim.

Know this, however: while we can and will lose our lives and fortunes, refusing to cooperate with the American KGB is the only way to retain our sacred honor. In the immortal words of Mohandas K. Gandhi:

"They may torture my body, break my bones, or even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, not my obedience."

My friends, my brother and sister nerds, my comrades-in-arms: we are called. This is our time. We must step forward to the challenge, to do our part to see that our children are not burdened with the chains of slavery our governments wish to place on them. We must stand together, united in our cause, and refuse to be the spineless lackeys that the FedGov believes us to be.

We are our nation's, our children's, our entire way of life's best hope. If we fail now, the only recourse our children will have is bloody revolution.

That is our choice: stand now or force revolution on our children.

I invite you to join me in a solemn vow, a covenant between ourselves and those we protect:

Come what may, we will not submit to this evil law.

The FedGov has just made this OUR war. Let them cower in fear before the revenge of the nerds.

William Stone, III is a computer nerd and philosopher of the Zero Aggression Principle from McCook Lake, South Dakota. He seeks the Libertarian Party's nomination for the 2004 Senate race is South Dakota.

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