Big Brother in Cambridge

America. Home of the free, land of rugged individualism, and one of only a few places in the world where privacy is considered an inalienable right. Cambridge. The cradle of it all.

Two recent experiences have brought home to me the still secret lesson that, in the age of high technology, freedom is fast 'becoming a memory; the right to privacy, a cruel hoax on average saps who just don't know any better.

First, I saw "Sneakers," the new Sidney Poitier-Robert Redford film about Orwellian government use of technology capable of unearthing just about any iota of informations it wants on individual citizens.

At first, I merely was amused to recognize from my espionage reporting days that almost all the gadgets portrayed--with the possible exceptions of the high-mathematics all-code breaker--actually exist, and are available comercially.

Then a few days after seeing the movie, I went to a Cambridge bank to open a checking account. When I recently renewed my driver's license in Washington, D.C., the clerk mistyped one digit in my social security number, which in most places, has become every American's personal identification number for just about every purpose.

I noticed it shortly after leaving Motor Vehicles, but didn't think much of it, and I certainly wasn't going to stand in line another three hours just to get the digit changed.

Back to the Cambridge bank. The clerk there dialed a telephone number, uttered a few passwords and then returned to tell me that I had an "invalid" Social Security number. By this time, I'd forgotten about the original error in my license, but I was captivated by the phrase, "invalid Social Security number." The woman refused to permit me to open an account. Get this: A bank, of all places, declined to accept my $3,000 because I had "an invalid Social Security number."

I had never been so embarrassed since I failed to produce the right document when a cop in South Africa, mistaking me for a local, demanded to see my passbook. In fact, that is precisely what Social Security numbers have become in American society--a means of tracking our movements and transactions, wherever we might go.

In a huff, I gathered my meager funds and went to another bank, where I finally was able to open an account after giving my number verbally.

Now of all the hundreds of millions of Social Security cards that have been issued, in what still is supposed to be a confidential system, I wondered how can a bank clerk determine that my number didn't count.

In this age of networking computers, there is no more privacy. Insurance companies, in what ought to be an anti-trust violation, share all kind of financial and medical records. If, for example, a person had an alcohol or drug problem at the age of 20, they would find enormously difficulty in ever getting life insurance therafter.

Just about anyone with the merest pretense of being a business can access the most detailed financial reports from nationwide Credit Bureaus not overly concerned about accuracy.

Hospitals, doctors and lawyers now share computerized information about any previous litigation patients may have been involved with. And some physicians have been known to base treatment decisions on this information.

Perhaps in an age of powerful computers and fast traveling information, we might as well get used to the idea that just about whatever we do--down to every little phone call we make--is ultimately discoverable by other people. Privacy? Freedom? Forget 'em. They're outta here.

Kenneth R. Walker, an independent television producer and columnist, is a fellow at the Institute of Politics and contributes occassionally to the Opinion page.