"What? CMR? I looked into that briefly, and there's nothing on the books yet, but I did find out that tapping cellular phone conversations is legal."
"Phone tapping, legal?" Scott couldn't believe his ears.
"Cellular phones, yeah. The FCC treats them like TV sets, radi- os, satellites. Anyone can listen to any station."
"That's incredible," Scott said, mouth gaping. "I wonder how they'll handle RF LAN's."
"RF LAN's," asked Ty. "What are those?"
"A bunch of computers tied together with radios. They replace the wires that connect computers now. Can you imagine?" Scott saw the irony in it. "Broadcasting your private secrets like that? Hah! Or if you have your own RF network, all you have to do is dial up another one and all the information ends up right in your computer! Legal robbery. Is this a great country or what?"
"Now you know why I'm leaving. The NSA cannot be permitted to keep the public uninformed about vulnerabilities to their person- al freedom. And hiding under the umbrella of national security gets old. A handful of paranoid un-elected, un-budgeted, non-ac- countable, mid-level bureaucrats are deciding the future of privacy and freedom in this country. They are the ones who are saying, 'no, no problem,' when they know damn well it is a prob- lem. What they say privately is in diametric opposition to their public statements and positions."
Scott stifled a nervous laugh. Who wound Tyrone up? A conspira- cy theory. Tyrone was drunk. "Don't you think that maybe you're taking this a little far," he suggested. For the first time in years the shoe was on the other foot. Scott was tempering some- body elses extremes.
"Why the hell do you think there's so much confusion at ECCO and CERT and the other computer SWAT teams? NSA interferes at every step," Tyrone responded. "And no, I am not taking this too far. I haven't taken it far enough. I sit with these guys and they talk as though I'm not there. I attend meetings where the poli- cies and goals of ECCO are established. Shit, I trust the dope- smoking hippies from Berkeley more than anyone from the Fort." The bitterness came through clearly, but Scott could see it wasn't focussed on any one person or thing.
But Scott began to understand. For over 20 years Tyrone had insulated himself from the politics of the job and had seen only what he wanted to see; a national Police Force enforcing the laws. Tyrone loved the chase of the crime. The bits and pieces, the endless sifting of evidence, searching for clues and then building a case from shreds. The forensics of modern criminology had been so compelling for Tyrone Duncan that he had missed the impact that the mass proliferation of technology would have on his first love - The Constitution.