If history has proved anything it has shown that in times of conflict our personal freedom - the very essence of being American - can be moved to the back seat, at least temporarily.

In the Middle East and elsewhere people live their life with a daily routine of living in fear of assassination, car bombings, suicide attacks, mass shootings, or other terrorist attacks. In the back of one's mind, vigilance is the driving force and one is always on the lookout for strange packages left alone, or someone acting bizarre. One can never feel like they can let their guard down.

There is no personal anonymity! You must carry identification at all times and are forced to go through armed checkpoints from point A to point B; the presence of soldiers is evident everywhere. Free movement is not free and is limited. Government buildings are barricaded and cameras are everywhere peering the neighborhood for irrational acts. You cannot simply enter a building to admire the interior architecture. You need an appointment.

You risk the chance of being detained for some time if you are deemed suspicious looking, or "out of place" by authorities. Naturally, if you publicly denounce any of these actions you can be whisked away and not seen again for a very long time, once the government decides that your conduct is associated with "terrorism."

Can't happen in America, right? Many of these basic freedoms in America have been under siege by technology for some time.

Here are home there are moves to have a national ID card which could have a computer chip that follows you around, as well as contain every bit of info about who you are.

That OnStar system in your car really does know where you are - and for anyone else like the government who wants to track your movements.

Face recognition scanning technology already exists and has been used at the Super Bowl, for example. A camera takes your picture and compares it to an existing database. Provided my mug doesn't break the camera, what happens to the picture when it's decided you are no threat? Is it destroyed or placed into a different database?

We already know that your EZPass information is EZ to get by law enforcement.

Your financial information, specifically your daily bank transactions, are being monitored and must be shared with authorities if they see anything "suspicious."

Your email is readily available to authorities with snooping software as well as phone conversations with wiretaps.

Iris technology allows you to be matched using your eyes, a new twist on the saying 'you have very telling eyes! '

Your photograph is being taken about 40 times before you have lunch. Smile for the camera at the bank, ATM machine, toll booths, thruway lanes and overpasses, at red lights, convenience stores, the Malls and their stores. There are security cameras everywhere - even satellites that can resolve down to the size of a dime. Do you feel like you're being watched yet?

Health and life insurance companies want to know what your genetic pattern is so they can charge you different rates.

The over riding issue now facing our country is how do we balance personal privacy against the need for protection against our enemies? There are some intrusions that while obnoxious are tolerable. If someone wants to watch my buying habits on Ebay, or as I surf the Web, and then send me advertising hooks, well ok, fine. If the government wants to read my public Usenet postings for secret messages, that's fine too. I'm even secure enough to let them run their translators through my private email looking for secret threats. The FBI possess the controversial Carnivore device, now called DCS-1000, that can do that and major online providers like AOL have said they will cooperate. However, the real question is how do I know where and when they stop, what total information they gather, and what they do with it after they realize I'm a red-blooded American? Shouldn't I be fearing my enemy, not my own government?

Osama Bin Laden has recently proclaimed that Americans will not feel free until Palestine is free. Do you get the feeling that while he may lose the battle, he has won the war?

History has proven over and over that those who fail to remember the mistakes of the past will continue to make those same mistakes. Yes, we all feel violated and vulnerable because of the tragedy of September 11, but let us not allow terrorism to break the very foundation of being American, or else the bad guys win. That simply is not the way endings are suppose to be written.