What’s more, if Bill Clinton and Al Gore really cared about protecting citizens in a high-tech age, they would worry less about snooping on citizens and more about hardening up points of vulnerability. Steele noted how easily criminals could “maliciously interfere with the computers that control the power system. It is relatively easy to destroy computer capabilities—this takes much less skill than to ‘crack’ them and divert computing resources.” Also, terrorists could wreak havoc with computers that controlled telephone systems in such areas as communications for government and banking. He also warned of interference with the computers of Wall Street and the Federal Reserve. “Trillions in digital data” could vanish into the ether. “A massive global economic panic” would ensue. Preventative measures wouldn’t be cheap, but if the American government did care about security, it would prepare realistically for the threats of the information era rather than doing an inept Big Brother act. To rig up a whole nation for wire taps would be both a waste and a disgrace. I pondered the ironies. Here the NSA and similar agencies were supposed to protect normality—to guard families against dopesters, sex perverts, terrorists, and the rest—and yet Phil Zimmermann the husband and father might go to jail. “I think it’s kind of unreal to him,” Zimmermann said when I asked how his son felt about this. “I tell him that I have some talented lawyers working for me, and that we’re doing the best we can.” And Zimmermann’s wife? “She thinks that they can’t possibly indict me, because that would be wrong—that somehow they’ll realize that and just back out. Of course by the time your book is printed, we’ll know one way or the other whether she was right.” A Few Words about Library Books, Democracy, and Socks the Cybercat The White House in the 1990s was extolling computer nets as a way to Bring Government Closer to the People. Americans could dial up “An Interactive Citizens’ Handbook” on the Internet, see a photo of a teenaged Clinton with JFK, and listen to Socks the Clinton cat meow. But could Clinton-Gore hear _us_? Just how “interactive” was the White House? Clinton boosters formed a group called Americans Communicating Electronically to improve electronic contacts between mortals and bureaucrats. Al Gore, meanwhile, had flaunted his typing skills with the famous visit to CompuServe. But was electronic democracy truly alive on the Internet and other computer networks? Not quite. All the techish sizzle notwithstanding, Clinton-Gore might instead be giving us electronic oligarchy, especially if Republicans followed the horrible precedents that the White House was setting. Consider the dubious, somewhat Orwellian process that was shaping the National Information Infrastructure—the famous data highways and related endeavors.