Alright, back to the "Spy Game." Here's a question: do you mind having your e-mails monitored by the NSA?

Personally, I don't--does that surprise you? Here's why: there's a difference between reading and monitoring. Reading my e-mails right off the bat would be a problem--they don't need to know what I've bought on e-bay, or Amazon.com, or what messages I'm sending to my friends and family in other places.

Or do they? Do they, sometimes at least?

Astute and thorough readers of the website (www.imkoontz.com) will remember that I indeed warned them that the NSA was rumored to be monitoring perhaps EVERY electronic communication on the planet: e-mails, blogs, faxes--perhaps even cell-phone transmissions (I wrote that in mid-2005, by the way, before any recent revelations).

Remember, monitoring is not reading.

Monitoring is okay, in my opinion--the NSA looks for certain "red-flag" words or phrases, and then jumps in deeper if indicated. The catch, of course, is the sensitivity at which they jump in! If the NSA begins reading every e-mail of mine because I type the word "explosive" in this blog, then that's a problem--it's too nebulous; the bar has been set too low. If they wait until that red-flag word is followed by other red-flag words (chemical formulas, U.S. terrorist targets, Al-Qaeda operatives) then, frankly, I don't have a problem with that. Because I know that doing that is important for our national security.

At that point, they can read whatever they want, in my opinion--hell, they can even call me and ask why I'm typing those words on the internet, for all I care. Some people will say I'm crazy for supporting that; that the Government has no business monitoring anything or anyone for any reason.

But I think that's an unrealistic and naive view-point in our modern society. Surveillance cameras already litter the landscape (just go to London--nearly EVERY square foot of public space is being monitored), police cars endlessly patrol the streets, and the NSA monitors e-mails to try and figure out who is a terrorist and who is okay. That's the unfortunate modern reality.

In my opinion, if you're okay, then you've got nothing to hide. So don't worry about it. I don't--and this is coming from someone who basically assumes that he's already being monitored.

Why do I think so, you ask?

You should see the list of web-sites I visited to gather information for the Apparite books! Nothing illegal, of course--they're all there for public perusal, like the CIA and FBI homepages, weapons pages, poisons pages, hand-to-hand combat pages--but I would not be at all surprised if this pointed surfing had not drawn someone's attention and there's now a (thin) dossier on me somewhere.

And yet it doesn't bother me. Because I've got nothin' to hide. Because I have a valid reason for wanting to know the effects and derivation of ricin, or the minimum age of FBI Academy acceptance.

Maybe I'm naive, overly trusting, or just plain stupid. But it only makes sense to me: why would the NSA want to read everyone's stupid e-mails anyway? Just a lotta' work; a big waste of time. I simply can't see them doing it without some specific reason. I can't see them spending thousands of man-hours reading millions of e-mails in the hopes that one of them might bear fruit. That approach would be horribly inefficient.

That being said, if it comes out that they are, then I'm gonna' be kinda' pissed. And you can be pissed, too. And I'll come back on this blog and admit that I was wrong--if the NSA hasn't shut it down by then, that is.