God's Surveillance Society

There are eyes everywhere. For some, that's an uneasy reality. For others, it provides a sense of safety. Then there's God — who sees all, and yet is Someone we can't seem to track.

A writer named Walter Kirn met a friend at an art gallery in Hollywood, his first visit to a gallery in many years. The next morning, in his email inbox, he found several ads urging him to invest in art.

Coincidence? Probably not.

Then he consulted an online calendar of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in the Los Angeles area. He was annoyed when he began to receive invitations to drug and alcohol rehab centers. How could these centers know that he might need them? Membership in AA is supposed to be confidential.

But things got really bad when he saw, on his Facebook page, the name and picture of a California musician. He had bumped into the man several times at AA meetings in a private home, but in accordance with AA custom, the man had never told him his name. Facebook revealed the man's identity by connecting his name and picture with his phone number — which was the only piece of information that had been shared.

Walter Kirn discovered that he is being watched.

And so are you.

Be...