Big Brother really is watching

"[HHS Sec. Tommy] Thompson gave me a tour of his universe Wednesday, a few hours before Reagan's body arrived in Washington for funeral ceremonies. The aptly named Command Center looks and feels like a hybrid of "Star Trek" and "ER." I half expected Spock and Leonard McCoy to beam down and report to Captain Thompson. . . .
"This is the most exciting war room in the world," Thompson says with grim pride. With its own ventilation system, it is also impervious to bioterrorist attack.
If a bomb goes off, Thompson says, "we can stay."
There is solace in that knowledge, even if the technology that permits such preparation is chillingly Orwellian.
"What's your address?" Thompson asks. I give him a street number and a grid suddenly appears on a screen with a tiny computer-generated hand resting on the spot. When I asked if he could tell whether my assistant had shown up for work, Thompson laughed, but not much. In a few months, technology under development will allow his staff to zero in on a license plate.
Another wall is covered with one huge screen (which is really 10 screens cobbled together) that can project the entire planet as a flat, one-dimensional image with touch-pad access to location-specific information. An adjacent wall is home to four television screens that can pick up 4,000 stations. I lift a telephone receiver to hear the telecast from Al-Jazeera. Other screens map weather, storm damage and diseases."