Check it out at http://users.chartertn.net/ tonytemplin/ FBI—eyes/ After you have stopped chuckling, think seriously about the matter of privacy and your computer.

The technology exists when you’re online to record your keystrokes and mouse clicks, not to mention the e-mails you send and websites you visit. And it’s not just the government you have to worry about. While government spying may be most troubling, illicit computer spying by cyber-criminals could cause the most harm.

The issue is privacy and how much of it we are losing the more we enter the high-tech world we’ve created. That new environment is no longer just a supplement to our work and leisure; for most people it has become the network in which they live.

We like to think that privacy is a civil right, though not mentioned specifically in the Constitution or Bill of Rights. It was such an obvious right — the right to be left alone — that it didn’t need to be spelled out in a document.

But the crafters of our Constitution couldn’t have envisioned the mad rush into electronic technology and communication that would begin just a century and a half after that famous tract took effect, 217 years ago today. Otherwise, maybe they would have created some safeguards.

Who would have thought a century ago when we began running wires to people’s homes for electricity and telephones that someday those wires could and would be used to monitor "private" activities? Or 50 years ago, when cables for television were added to the mix?

With all those wires, it was just a matter of time before they became two-way.

And now we’re going wireless.

The government was snooping whenever it justified the need for wiretaps, long before people had ever heard of the Internet, e-mail or cyberspace. The trouble is that the advances in technology also provide the possibility for advances in surveillance.

But what has our reaction been?

Even though just about everybody considered privacy, which includes both the freedom to be left alone and the freedom from surveillance, a civil right, it was being slowly eroded with each new step up the cyber ladder. And it was happening right under our noses.

We took the bribe — we wanted the goods: the cell phones, computers, the Internet, e-mail, digital TV, and the system was more than happy to deliver them. If you want to be tuned in, you have to give up something. They were just marketers and demographers. What’s a little privacy, anyway?

Until 2001 — 9/11. That’s really when too many in government and too many citizens decided that our security was worth the sacrifice of some privacy.

That’s when national security began to take precedence over what are viewed as civil rights.

That’s when President Bush proposed and Congress passed the USA Patriot Act.

Under the Patriot Act, the FBI has authorized more than 30,000 invasions of people’s phone and e-mail records, as well as financial data and the Internet sites they surf.

The Patriot Act removed the requirement that the records sought be those of someone under suspicion. And guess what? Despite attempts to limit the assaults on our privacy, Congress is poised to renew the act.

People just don’t seem to care. If peeping toms were caught looking into the windows of their homes, they’d have a fit. When the government checks their e-mail or web searches, it’s "oh, well."

And if those sanctioned compromises to our privacy aren’t terrible enough, the cyber criminals are keeping up with the government when it comes to spying.

Internet users everywhere are at risk from keyboard pirates who have the ability to electronically hide software in people’s computers that transmits certain keystrokes back to the criminals.

What kind of keystrokes? You know, user names and passwords so they can access your bank accounts, credit cards and anywhere else where there’s cash. Computer security companies say this kind of crime has soared in the past year.

You wonder if the only way you can maintain any sense of classical privacy is to unplug all the wires and tune out. The ship might be spinning out of control, but who’s willing to go overboard.

Perhaps our changing attitude toward the right of privacy was best stated Wednesday by Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., during the Senate debate on the Patriot Act.

"Civil liberties do not mean much when you are dead," Bunning told the Senate.

Yes, it’s a scare tactic, which was how the Patriot Act got approved in the first place four and a half years ago.

And what a contrast to the cry of 230 years ago by Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty or give me death."

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Cary Brunswick is managing editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at (607) 432-1000, ext. 217, or cary@thedailystar.com.