Big Brother is watching, rant

I have had to change my beloved, oversized and pointless Government Identity Card for the so called Citizens Card. So I grudgingly head over to the most feared bureaucracy in Portugal – the Citizens Shop or Loja de Cidadao. When I get there, I discover the line just to get into the building is a 15 miles long. The book I brought almost manages to kill the three hours I spend waiting. Almost. “Number 242!” the clerk calls out. “Number 242!” “Here,” I say, almost running towards the counter. “ID and proof of residency, please,” the clerk says, not looking up from her terminal. I hand over my passport, social security card, driver’s license and a copy of my electric bill, gas bill, cable, water and a letter from my mother. Satisfied I am who I say I am, the clerk punches some numbers into her computer and says, “Okay, stand in the box to get your picture taken.” Freshly shaved with a new haircut and wearing a nice shirt, I take up position in the box and smile. “If you’re wearing glasses take them off,” She continues without looking away from her computer screen and not noticing that I don’t wear glasses. “And you can’t smile.” “Why not?” I ask in my really bad Portuguese. The clerk taps a sign next to the camera that reads “Facial Recognition System.” “Are you kidding me?” I say to myself. “If you smile it throws off the computer.” “Jesus. Talk about Big Brother.” “You want the Citizens Card or not?” I know the moment my picture is taken, it will join millions of faces in a system accessible to law enforcement personnel. The rationale behind such programs is to root out identity thieves and insurance fraudsters, hunt down Al Qaeda operatives and catch bank robbers who forget to wear a ski mask. I also know it will enable the government to track every move I make. A guy who used to work for the transport Authority told me that when I drive onto the 25th of April bridge, cameras are not only reading my license plate and comparing them to a list of wanted automobiles, but are also capturing an image of my face. “The cameras are so good,” he said, “They can count the change in your cup holder.” So, even if I leave my Via Verde Card at home, rip out Car Insurance disk and take the battery out of my mobile phone, the government’s electronic gauntlet will still detect me going into the city. Not that I want to do anything nefarious, mind you, but does the Portuguese Intelligence Agency need to know I crossed the Tagus river to grab a 10 euro burger menu at Mackie D´s? It’s a brave new world. Credit card companies can count the change in my pocket, Google Maps has a picture of my house, for-profit companies dissect my forays online, the post office scans my mail and, thanks to Mr. Snowden, whatever you think of him, I know all my phone calls and Internet searches are stored in some kind of vast database. Now the President of the Republic knows I have an affinity for MILFs in cheerleading outfits. Just great. But if I want to work, sleep, drive or spend some quality man time in the toilet, I have to acquiesce yet again to the power of The State. “Take the picture,” I tell the clerk, and the results are monstrous. I’m usually told I look younger than my forty-two years, but the grumpy guy on my new picture looks sixty – and has been absorbed into an PSP/GNR/PJ/PIDE biometric super snooper program to boot. Depressed, I go to my local cigar shop where I strike up a conversation with the local police officer. ”Rod,” he says, after I tell him about my run in with the burgeoning security state, “In five years, you will have no expectation of privacy anywhere but your home.” After hearing that, I wonder if noon is too early to start drinking. As I puff on my Maduro, the television news starts squawking about Anthony Weiner and his affinity for posting his penis online. For some reason, men love sharing pictures of their dicks with the world. I’ve never done so and I’m not sure what dark corner of male sexuality powers the compulsion, but if you look at sites like Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Snap Chat, you’ll realize the Web is veritable sausagefest. Then an idea free-associates with my paranoid mind. If facial recognition is going to be part of our daily lives, why don’t we have penis identification software? Cockidentifcation? Men already think their penises are special, but I’m sure the phallus of the human male had enough biometric identifiers that make it as unique as a fingerprint, iris or strand of DNA. So if we analyse the data I’m sure there’s enough variances in length, girth, lack thereof, tapers, angles, shapes and bends to assemble a searchable database of dicks. Obviously, we’re talking about cataloging erect penises here. Flaccidly and shrinkage would only confuse the system – like glasses and smiling flummoxes facial recognition now. So how do we get all this tumescence online? We already have an impressive collection of dick pics lurking on the world’s data servers. Putting names to those penises might be a start. Perhaps aggrieved females could put names to the unwanted cock shots they get and forward them to some future government agency. On second thought, I can see this being abused by pissed off drunken women nationwide. “Don’t call me back will you? I’m sending your prick to Guantanamo or Siberia!” I’m afraid we’d have to mandate some kind of cold and clinical nationwide dick inventory. Of course we’d have to use machines – no busty nurses with analog tools like tape measures, sorry. Too many dicks, too little time. Maybe when a young man signs up for Selective Service, he’ll have to go to full mast for his country and stick his unit in the Federal Wangometer and register his johnson. Perhaps future trips to the Loja de Cidadao might involve porno mags and dropping your shorts. Or we could finally put those detested full body scanners in airports to good use. I’ll leave the logistics to others. So what’s the benefit to this system? What’s the value of having every guy’s dong digitized and searchable? Glad you asked. 1. If you’ve ever used a dating website, you know that people send misrepresentative pictures all the time. If you send a picture of a penis that’s not your own to impress some woman on a sex hook up site – the computer will label your fraudulent weenie and boot you out of the system. That’ll prevent a lot of female dissatisfaction. 2. National security. Terrorists are invariably perverts. Remember all the porn they found in Osama’s bunker? Two minutes after these guys wrap up their You Tube rants about miniskirts and Western decadence, they’re spanking it to Girls Gone Wild. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine them posting pics of their dicks. Well, once the World Wide government Agencies penis sniffing algorithms spot a terrorist schlong getting Tweeted from an IP in The Hindu Kush, time to send in the Predator Drones. That’s what I call a hard target. Whacking tangos was never so much fun. Oh I could go on forever…… 3. Could be used as an alternative ID – a guy never leaves his penis in his other pants. Maybe it could even be used as a passport. Like being able to pee standing up, just another advantage to being a dude. Who knew Visa stamps could be so kinky? 4. Scientists could crunch the numbers and finally tell us if all those ethnic/racial stereotypes are really true. 5. Aid in prosecutions. Think how much faster the Bill Clinton thing would have gone. 6. Interpol and their special separate department Interpole (sorry), would have a 10 Most Wanted Dicks Poster. And you wonder why your girlfriend always volunteers to buy stamps? 7. It would make life easier for porn producers. “Jimmy Wad’s got the flu. Check the database for local talent!” Like all sensitive information, a national dick database will have to be protected. God forbid the government uses it for illegal purposes. Cops will need a warrant before doing any search and uh, seizures, but let’s face it; the court will find a way to pervert the Constitution. And I’m sure some whistleblower wannabe will get a job with the National Penis Data Initiative to “see what’s really going on,” steal the information, release it to the press and then seek asylum in Russia. Putin. What a dick. An hour later, my cigar has gone cold and I finish typing this post on my tablet. I’m exhausted from thinking about so many synonyms for wieners. “What are you writing?” the police officer asks. “Sir,” I say. “You don’t want to know.”.