We are all on government lists these days. If some future crime prevention team were formed in a
Minority Report way, then I'd be targeted immediately, just from the searches I've run in researching my two psychological thrillers.
I've looked for stabbing techniques to the heart, making a bomb out of a small amount of fertiliser, ways of interfering with forensic analysis of a corpse, murderous cults through time and how mercenary soldiers are hired. Given that I'm a loner, (as most writers are), an outcast from society - then I'm all the more likely to be up to something nefarious!
True Story: In 1973 I was a nineteen year old library assistant, in my first full-time job getting some experience before attending library school to study for a professional qualification. I worked at a snooty branch library in Marylebone, part of the Westminster Library System. It really was the sort of place where lords and ladies came to borrow novels, and we had uniformed porters to carry their books out to a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce.
I was quite rebellious, even back then, so kicked against the traces a bit. The library building had several floors, with administrative offices at the top. Amazingly, these weren't locked, and a friend and I raided them in our tea-breaks at the weekend when no one was in there working. We accessed our personal files, and I was stunned to see mine, for a full background check had been made on me which came with inked government stamps that I'd passed a certain stage of security clearance. The really creepy thing, that freaked me out, was there was a real page from a composition exercise book written in my eight year old hand in 1962 complete with crayon illustration. This had a recent psychological assessment report stapled to it! I have no idea how they'd obtained it.
I need to emphasise that I was a nobody, a drone who shelved and stamped books. I'd signed a confidentiality agreement as part of my contract, as one of the library departments was a medical library which had all sorts of sensitive information in ancient reference books, that readers had to show proof of their professional medical status to access. Also, my father was chief photographer for British Aerospace, who made Concorde and several missile systems for the armament industry. He definitely had a high security clearance, as he was privy to the development of weapons and multi-million pound air transport projects. I still couldn't understand how his job would affect my lowly employment.
This was the first example I had that governments are monitoring us all of the time. I bet that my file is quite thick by now! And I'm such a good boy...(honest).
