EDITORIAL
When did we become snoops and snitches?

Just when we thought members of the local FBI's new Cyber Crime Squad were tapping away at their keyboards in hot pursuit of hackers, pedophiles and suspected terrorists, we find out they're visiting computer shops to ask repairmen to report criminal activities on customers' computers.

That might be a convenient way to snoop on citizens, but it doesn't bode well for computer repair specialists, network consultants and software developers who are now expected to add high-tech sleuthing to their job description.

Not only does it put these folks in an awkward position, but it could also affect their livelihoods if privacy-conscious folks decide they'd rather not surrender their computers to strangers who might scrutinize their hard drives and downloaded files.

Besides, most of the repair work involves crashed hard drives, miswired motherboards and other system problems, according to a report by Advertiser staff writer Peter Boylan. Repairmen say they don't have time to rummage through documents and files.

It's not that we don't want police to crack down on child pornographers and terrorists, but enlisting citizens who are not trained in police work to bust suspected cyber criminals smacks of the vigilantism that has resurfaced with the passage of the USA Patriot Act.

It's like asking libraries to report their members' suspicious book and video choices. As it is, under the Patriot Act, the FBI can surreptitiously search customers' book-buying or book-reading records and Internet use without informing people they have become the subject of a search, and can issue gag orders prohibiting librarians from disclosing their contact with intelligence agencies.

These intelligence-gathering tactics are chipping at hard-won civil liberties. We're letting the Orwellian "Big Brother" scenario take over without much of a fight.

Already, we have grown accustomed to security cameras in stores, elevators and numerous other venues. There's even software called NetSnitch that allows suspicious parents to trail their children through cyberspace.

Granted, privacy in cyberspace is a nebulous area, but common sense tells us snooping in other people's computers is like going through their filing cabinets, and that ought to require a search warrant.