| The
late Truman Capote once postulated that inviting a writer into your life is akin
to waiving your right to live a private existence. It should be accepted and assumed
as common knowledge, Capote wryly observed, that at some point in the course of
your friendship the writer is going to borrow or steal anything he or she likes
from your time on earth and put it on paper for the whole world to gawk at.
I wish my girlfriend had known Truman Capote.
"I didn't exactly
steal anything from Bobbi's e-mail to you," I told Justine yesterday.
"You showed it to me and I borrowed a very generic quote that could have
been written by anyone."
And then, perhaps a bit arrogantly, and
to justify my theft — after all, it was theft even if my own loose writer's
morality refused to accept that – I said: "Besides, what she wrote to you
bolstered my argument and supported my thesis."
What Bobbi had written
to Justine was an e-mail corroborating my suspicion that "surprise"
apartment inspections were occurring in regions of the United States outside of
California. These unwarranted intrusions on the private lives of innocent, law-abiding
citizens provided the framework for my article, "Operation
Apartment Snoops", that appeared on Antiwar.com, Yahoo News, and a flurry
of internet bulletin boards catering to conspiracy mongers.
Justine was
shooting some pretty serious daggers at me with those pale blue eyes of hers so
I quickly changed the subject. Sort of.
"There's a pattern emerging
to these e-mails." I said. On the table before Justine I laid out the impressive
pile of electronic mail that was trickling in as a result of the original article.
"Remember the e-mail we got from my friend Alex in Fort Wayne, Indiana, complaining
of sudden and intrusive apartment inspections?"
"Yes."
"Fort Wayne, Indiana, has an active Citizen Corps Program." The Citizens
Corps Program, I explained, is President Bush's initiative to provide an extra
measure of homeland security by enlisting thousands of citizens and volunteer
agencies across the nation to become "extra eyes and ears" in the fight
against terrorism.
"You mean the TIPS program?" Justine asked.
"Yeah. That's part of the Citizen Corps. Now, look at this e-mail that came
in an hour ago."
Justine studied the letter from JackB.:
I found your article "Operation Apartment Snoops" posted on Antiwar.com
enlightening. I live in a 28 unit, 15 year old apartment building in Canoga Park
(San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles) CA. It is up to code and meets earthquake specs.
In July, I got a call from the resident apartment manager that a city
building inspector would be around in 3 days to inspect certain apartments. I
was told that they were only interested in tenants who had been in the building
the longest and because I have been here for 11 years my apartment was of interest.
As a bachelor I tend to be not as neat as the married neighbors so I spent one
morning cleaning the place up. The inspection day arrived. Late in the afternoon
the apartment manager called to tell me that the inspection would not be necessary.
Our apartment building looks like the UN. We have a good representation
from many ethnic groups but most renters don't stay longer than their one-year
leases. I think the inspectors canceled the inspection of my apartment when they
saw that my surname is of English origin.
In the years I have been here
we have been inspected by the city only once. That was after the Northridge earthquake
and that was a structural safety inspection.
When Justine finished
perusing Jack's e-mail I mentioned a phone conversation I had earlier in the afternoon
with a friend who lives in the Los Feliz district of L.A. She, too, had a similar
experience last month with a warning of an impending "major inspection",
only to learn at the last minute that the inspection was being canceled for some
residents but was still on for others.
"Los Feliz is Los Angeles,"
I said to Justine, "and Canoga Park is around the corner from North Hills.
Both Los Angeles and North Hills have active Citizen Corps Programs. There are
only 70 communities in the entire country that have enlisted in the program."
I urged Justine to continue reading the e-mails. She picked up a letter
from Charles F that arrived overnight:
My wife and I live in an apartment
complex managed by AIMCO in Alexandria, VA. I am a commodities reporter in Washington,
I cover North American electricity markets. But I have an MA in Arab Studies from
Georgetown University, am Muslim (this explains the fairly extensive collection
of Islamic and Arabic-language literature, but I have lots of classics as well
– did Mohammad Ata read Plutarch? I doubt it...), have traveled in the Middle
East and was considered for an analyst position catching terrorists with the CIA
until their security people decided I was politically unreliable and (based on
my military record, which doesn't look very good) potentially unstable.
We lived here before, then moved to New York last year (I was working for a now-defunct
wire service covering natural gas markets, the UN and the California power crisis
in our NYC office across the street from the WTC and was there on 11 September
– "Why were you in NY on 11 September" was one of the dumb questions
the CIA turds asked me during my lengthy and painful security interviews), and
moved back after the CIA offer. Then it fell through and I found other work.
Anyway, there have been routine HVAC and balcony inspections in this complex before,
I remember them. But last Friday I get this call from the management saying our
balcony is unsafe and needs to be repaired. It hasn't been. Now, it probably
isn't much, but I'm more than a little paranoid about all this right now. I've
never gotten a call from Foxchase management about anything EVER, not even when
I've called them about something needing to be fixed. So
I don't know.
"Is there a Citizen Corps Program in Alexandria?" Justine asked.
"Arlington and Nickelsville, Virginia," I said. "Close enough."
"Are you getting any responses from people who aren't in a community
that belongs to the program?"
"No one here in the Bay Area of
California has signed on yet," I explained. "But Berkeley has always
been under scrutiny for subversives with or without a sanctioned federal snooping
program in place."
I handed her the e-mail from an anonymous writer
who simply wanted to be labeled "Bay Area Resident":
At the
beginning of July, a friend who lives in an apartment in Berkeley, California
reported to me that employees of the landlord wanted to inspect the unit. Given
the adversarial nature of landlord/tenant relations in Berkeley (Berkeley has
a nasty rent control law), this had my friend in something of a panic. However,
he later mentioned that it turned out to be no big deal - something about a routine
check of a fire extinguisher.
At the time, I thought this explanation
was a little fishy because (a) the extinguisher has been located outside for several
years and thus an inspection wouldn't require access to the unit, and (b) back
in the days when the extinguisher was located inside, the usual procedure was
to swap a new extinguisher for an old one without bothering to check first whether
the old extinguisher needed a recharge or not. However, since the employee involved
in the inspection was not one who would normally be involved in hostile actions
against a tenant, my friend and I concluded that the inspection probably was nothing
to worry about.
Your article puts this situation in a whole different
light. The landlord owns over a thousand units in Berkeley (as well as several
other businesses), and he is currently serving time in Federal prison. It wouldn't
be difficult for the Feds to persuade him to cooperate, and gaining access to
so many units in such a hotbed of political activity would certainly be a high
priority for any snooping program such as you describe.
I also heard
of another interesting incident, this one involving an East Bay homeowner who
is also a friend of mine. Last weekend, it seems that a sales rep of an alarm
company showed up unannounced at his door and, ignoring a "No solicitations"
sign prominently posted by the entrance, offered to install a free home alarm
system in exchange for letting him put up a yard sign. When the offer was turned
down, the sales rep left and was shortly thereafter observed talking to two other
men sitting in a SUV (with tinted windows, but no logos or other markings to indicate
that the vehicle belonged to any bona fide commercial operation) parked in the
middle of the street with its engine running. They didn't seem to be too interested
in making a similar offer to any of the neighbors, as the "sales rep"
soon got in the vehicle and the whole gang quickly drove off.
By the
way, both friends are known to express opinions on the internet that at times
stray from patriotic norms.
And from Seattle, another non-signatory
to the Stasi .... I mean, Citizen Corps Program, came the following from Mae:
Just went through that myself this past March. They came up with excuses to
enter our apartments (600 unit complex) FIVE times during the month of March for
various "inspections" never before conducted in the 14 years I've lived
there. Three of their notices were less than 24 hours. One was to "eliminate
the mold problem" which consisted of sending in two early-twenties maintenance
men who made several comments about my "nice furnishings" and personal
belongings while they slapped latex paint on the offending aluminum window panes
(and the carpet and my desk).
My solution? Got so disgusted I finally
bit the bullet and tried to buy my first house. Wa-HOO!! Moved in to my little
house on June 28 and have slept like a baby since!! I've been an apartment dweller
for 20+ years and have never before felt such peace and personal security since
I lived at home with good ol' Mom and Dad! NO ONE enters here without my knowledge
and consent!!
"She makes a good point," said Justine, laying
Mae's letter aside. "They'd be hard pressed to find an excuse to barge right
on in on homeowners."
"Well, I sort of cynically suggested in
my article that there eventually will be some rationale concocted to make that
a reality, but then I received this e-mail."
You ask rhetorically
when and how will they inspect home owners? Perhaps they aren't even interested
in such things now as vested, property tax-paying individuals aren't their interest?
I mean, look at the corporate scandals. Look at how quickly they jailed all those
people from Enron (sarcasm intended). These aren't people after the "productive"
element of society. I would surmise that they want to know about us "renters"
because we are the most likely to be either poor, or foreign or subversive in
some way in the eyes of the elitist war mongers that make up the government.
"Have you got any hate mail yet?" Justine asked.
I
smiled. "One e-mail. It was from a guy named Bryan who titled the e-mail
'Liberals' and the text simply said 'You're a Loser.'"
"This
is all very interesting, compelling, and more than a little scary," said
Justine. "But it doesn't change the fact that you stole a paragraph from
Bobbi's e-mail to me. That was private."
"I did it for a good
cause," I mumbled like a little boy chastised for leaving the milk out on
the counter all night long.
Justine gave me a long, level look and said:
"So, when are you sending in your application to join the Citizens Corps?" Rodger
Jacobs is a freelance journalist based in Northern California whose work has
appeared in numerous publications, including Eye Magazine, Hustler, Panik,
E Commerce Business News, Adam Film World, and Mind Kites. |
