The Watchmen
by J.D. Tuccille

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, indeed. Who watches the watchmen? That's an old question, as attested to by the fact that my first rendering of it above is in a language that only dead people speak -- or would speak if they weren't so damned closed-mouthed. That the question has been so poorly answered has an awful lot to do with why every state enforcement agency, regulatory board, police department, and motley gang of government thugs ever assembled has eventually gone wrong and started breaking the furniture. It's a problem that we may never completely solve, but the Internet provides at least a partial answer: all of us.

For starters, the Internet allows information that trickles out over time to be collected and presented in context. When gun shop owner Darryl Howell was killed during a raid by ATF agents and local cops in Taft California, The Bakersfield Californian lost no time in assembling a special section (http://www.bakersfield.com/special/taftshooting) that included news stories, outraged letters to the editor, Howell's autopsy report, and official warrant inventories and incident reports. The case is still unresolved, but the public has information that would have been unavailable ten years ago.

Of course, one of the strengths of the Web is that it's power isn't confined to "official" media outlets -- it's a game that anybody can play. Twenty-three-year-old Andrew Warner is just the sort of anybody to take up the challenge, too; his entry is The Speedtrap Registry (http://www.speedtrap.com), which is just what it sounds like -- a listing of places around the U.S. and the world beyond where a lead foot is ill-advised. Warner is rare among proprietors of "watchman" sites in that he runs The Speedtrap Registry as a commercial enterprise, rolling advertisements past the 100,000 weekly visitors he claims for his site.

More typical is Frank Ney's Abuses of the BATF (http://www.access.digex.net/~croaker/batfabus.html), which is run as a labor of ... well, not love, but really strong dislike. Ney keeps the site updated with stories of abuses by an agency once mocked as revenooers and now known best as the gun cops who managed to turn a minor bust in the small city of Waco, Texas into a national trauma. Yes, Frank uses the term "jackbooted thugs" -- read a few entries and you will too.

Also keeping an eye on the BATF, though in a boringly objective way, is the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a suitably academic name for an operation based at Syracuse University. TRAC boasts that it offers "comprehensive, independent, and nonpartisan information on federal law enforcement." A core collection of data is reserved for members of the news media, but the public has access to material on the BATF (http://trac.syr.edu/tracatf/), IRS (http://trac.syr.edu/tracirs/), DEA (http://trac.syr.edu/tracdea/), and FBI (http://trac.syr.edu/tracfbi/).

If you've had quite enough fair-mindedness, try IRS Abuse Reports (http://www.neo-tech.com/irs-class-action/1.html) and IRS Horror Stories (http://www.not4irs.org/horrorstories/index.html). Abuse Reports is hosted by a group called "Neo-Tech" that draws from Objectivism and libertarianism. Horror Stories, on the other hand, is maintained by the eminently mainstream National Federation of Independent Businesses as part of a campaign to replace the tax code. Both sites contain material about the tax man that will have you burying your savings in the back yard.

Occupying a sort of middle ground between The Bakersfield Californian and the Web sites targeted at single agencies is WorldNetDaily, a Web-based news operation that has done excellent coverage of the transformation of federal law enforcement agencies into some of the best-armed military forces to ever roust an illegal immigrant or patrol a park. The full series (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/exclusiv/970815.ex.FEDPOWER.ArmedFeds.1.html) is available online and makes for uncomfortable reading. Keep the door barricaded while you check it out.

Of course, the next step beyond surfing other people's sites is gathering the information yourself. You can check up on federal agencies (http://bsd.mojones.com/hellraiser_central/features/muckrake3.dev.html) and Congress (http://www.mojones.com/hellraiser_central/features/muckrake2.html) with Mother Jones magazine's "How to Muckrake in Cyberspace" series.

Then again, you can go directly to the source with the Fully-Automated, Fill-in-the-Blanks, FOI Letter Generator (http://www.rcfp.org/foi_lett.html) and the Fully Automated, Fill-in-the-Blanks, State Open Records Law Request Letter Generator (http://www.splc.org/ltr_sample.html). Don't forget to get your letter notarized.

But what do you do once you have all of the terrible facts? How about emulating Dan Butterfield. His "Gloria Sankuer is a hypocrite and an idiot" page (http://members.aol.com/neofrant/index.html) has attracted much media attention-and the ire of its target, a city councilwoman in Warren, Michigan who advocates censoring the Internet. According to the Detroit News, Sankuer said the page "should be muzzled." Hmmm, sounds like Butterfield was right on target.

But don't expect it to stop there. In recent weeks, New York City has been plastered with flyers recruiting hackers to target authoritarian regimes for a very special sort of online attention. The Chinese government's official Web page has already been hit, as have government sites in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. For some folks, watching just isn't enough.