Quick, Somebody Call the ACLU!

We in the U.S. are always wary about potential invasions of privacy. The Patriot Act, despite getting the vote of nearly every politician in Washington, is universally decried by nearly every politician in (or out of) Washington. Civil-liberties groups fret over the possibility of the NSA tapping into phone calls between people in the U.S. and suspected terrorists overseas. We can't go a week without some hand-wringing news story about how our employers are monitoring our e-mail, or how Google's super-computers are keeping track of our surfing habits. Some folks don't even like using club cards at the local grocery store -- you never know what Ralphs could do with that information.

So I'm wondering why here, in this ever-progressive bastion of civil-liberties vigilance, no one seems to sweat about an annual, incredibly invasive bit of government information-gathering.

I've just completed Metro's annual "Commuter Transportation Survey Form" -- under duress from my employer, which is legally required to get these things from 90 percent of all its workers. The form forces me to chart where I begin each day, when and where I go to work, and how. It wants to know my work schedule, my vacation and sick time, if I carpool or telecommute.

Why this is any bureaucrat's business is beyond me. And while this may all seem innocuous, certainly such information could be abused if it fell into the wrong hands. Personally, I find much more troubling the thought of someone keeping records of when and for how long I leave my home than the possibility that the FBI might want to know what books I took out of the library.

Yet in a state where some won't even consent to putting gender on an ID card, this little bit of government intrusion into our private lives is treated as some civic duty. Somewhere out there our government maintains a stalker/burglar's dream database, but hey, that's OK, because somehow all this will encourage carpooling.

Who knew that Big Brother also came in shades of green?