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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, July 12, 1999
New hear this: We must all pay price of security
How am I doing? Nice of you to ask. As a matter of fact, I'm doing pretty darned well, In fact, I can't remember when I've felt so . . . secure.
I mean, sure, it's a big old scary world out there, and even in the workplace I must face such daunting challenges as a new computer system that in some respects remains as inscrutable as Spengler's Decline of the West in the original German.
But I digress. What's new in my life is the fact that, once within the battleship-gray walls of this here newspaper, I am finally free from the nagging fear that at any moment I may fall prey to assault by enraged letter-writers and/or sundry other desperadoes. Such a relief. And I owe it all to technology.
All right, OK: to technology, and to the corporate leaders who had the vision to confront this issue head-on even as lesser spirits (including this ink-stained wretch) scoffed and jeered, predicting the thing would never fly.
When I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Now, as we sit here secure in Fort Journalism, I feel obliged to salute those who made it happen.
True, we've had security measures here for some time: door locks activated by plastic cards, guards patrolling the premises in the wee hours, that sort of thing. But now we've got security. I regret that for reasons of, well, security I cannot share all the details with you, but I can touch on some of the high points:
For one thing, we're all badge-wearers now. Each Caller-Times creature now proudly sports a plastic ID card that bears a convincing (if not, in my case, flattering) photographic likeness of the bearer, accompanied by his/her name; and - I love this part - also functions to activate the external door locks. The neat thing is that you don't have to insert this card into the receptacle as you did with the old system: Now, you just attain a certain proximity to the sensor, and it lets you in.
(Actually, you have to be a bit closer than we had been led to believe, something on the order of 3 microns or so . . . but who's counting?)
True, there have been some minor dislocations associated with all this. For one thing, the advent of this zippy new card has, however unintentionally, fostered a kind of tribalization here..
See, we have a choice of how to display our ID badges/entry cards: We may wear them on a lanyard which is vaguely reminiscent of a bolo tie (or a leash, come to think of it), or we may use a little clip-on gadget to wear it on our pockets, collars or what have you.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but there have already been some low-intensity clashes between lanyard-wearers and clip-users. We lanyard-wearers (I lost my clip-on widget, so perforce have been dragooned into the other tribe) deride the other guys because the cards tend to pull their pockets all out of shape. They retort, with some justice, that we lanyard-wearers look more than a little silly in our get-up, especially since we seem to wind up most of the time with the blank side of the card showing.
(Some of us have another problem with the lanyards: They totally destroy the effect of a well-chosen cravat. We who have dedicated years of painstaking effort to our necktie collections are Not Amused.)
Then there's another matter which, while not as obtrusive, is in some respects more worrisome. Under the new dispensation, thanks to the installation of sturdy doors and hi-tech card-readers throughout the building, we who toil here are - at least in the small hours - to be allowed access only to those areas where we have business to conduct. Thus, newscreatures will not have access, say, to Advertising, and vice versa; Accounting folk will be denied entry to the press room.
All perfectly sensible. But . . . I know it's completely irrational; still, all of this calls to mind those World War II submarine movies on which I, for one, grew up.
Remember the depth-charge attacks?
"Skipper! The hull's been breached! Aft torpedo room's flooding!"
"The deuce you say! Seal all watertight bulkheads!"
"But . . . but, Skipper - Kowalski and Marinelli are trapped in there!"
"I've given you a direct order, Exec. Be a man: Do your duty. Besides . . ."
"What, Skipper?"
"They'll understand."
Sooner or later, we'll get used to all this. Till then, though, I'm not straying far from the conning tower.
(Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com)
Brooks Peterson
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