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  From: luis terrassa <luiste@prw.net>
  To  : <cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu>
  Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 03:45:47 -0500

Re: video cameras

Some years ago, before Sept. 11 2001, a friend of mine published a 
three of my short stories in her web magazine.  Some months later, I 
received a note about one of the stories from someone who e-mailed the 
magazine. We started communicating, and eventually it transpired that 
she had found the article because it had been forwarded by a friend who 
worked on one of the "crunchers" in some obscure government office, in 
charge of processing electronic communications for trigger words or 
phrases that the government might find suspicious. He was in the habit 
of forwarding her interesting stuff he found in the course of his work. 
As it happens, another article in the magazine had used the word 
"psychedelic", therefore triggering the monitoring device...

If by 1998 the government had deployed the capability of screening 
every electronic message that used the word "psychedelic", I wonder how 
far they might have advanced in these eventful six years...

(Not that we should be concerned about the spending of taxpayer's money 
in keeping us safe from the weirdos who might think the use of such 
words as "psychedelic" a threat to our democratic institutions...) By 
the way, in 1998 Bush had yet to make his first international trip 
beyond Cancun...

LUIS



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